Crafting Resilience Unsuccessfully: Notes on the Construction of a Participatory Disaster Risk Management Plan in Chile

In recent years, law transformation has enforced participative disaster risk management plans at the municipalities’ level, the most basic level of organization in the Chilean state. This modification has proven challenging for most local governments insofar as they do not have the human and economic resources to carry out this participative process while simultaneously facing several disaster risks, many of which have been exacerbated by the climate crisis. In this presentation, we explore some preliminary results of an ethnographic study carried out in Papudo, a small coastal town in central Chile, about the process of creating such a participative plan, considering earthquake, wildfire, and flooding risks. By doing so, we attempt to outline how such a plan is precariously enacted while dealing with settlement practices that aggravate disaster risk because of the lack of urban control possibilities due to irregular construction, on the one hand, and highly flexible construction norms, on the other.