An Appraisal of the Building Back Better Concept through the Case of Santa Olga, Chile

The concept “Building Back Better” (BBB) has been widely used as a motto for disaster recovery and reconstruction since first used in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami recovery process, and has permeated institutional policy through its adoption in the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction. Although BBB is a desirable goal for disaster recovery, its application in practice is challenging and has been predominantly biased towards achieving improvements in the physical to the detriment of socio-environmental dimensions of disasters.

To develop these ideas and test the BBB framework, this article presents an empirical discussion about the recovery process of Santa Olga, a rural town in Maule, central Chile, that was completely burned down by a firestorm in January 2017. The reconstruction process has been labeled as successful and exemplar by Chilean authorities and the press. The plan was very ambitious and relatively expensive, compared to other reconstruction cases in Chile and abroad. The town was rebuilt in place and the reconstruction plan explicitly aimed to improve pre-existing living conditions of Santa Olga’s population.

The discussion covers three dimensions of BBB: building back safer, faster, and more inclusively. By upgrading Santa Olga’s category from rural to urban, the reconstruction process was successful in rebuilding safer: infrastructure was improved to provide Santa Olga, amongst others, with full coverage of potable water and sewage, electricity, urban lighting, pavements and sidewalks. However, this implied a slower reconstruction, leaving elder survivors and vulnerable population with long waiting times for rebuilt houses. As climate change raises fire risk and firestorms become more frequent, we discuss inclusiveness in terms of opportunity cost of funding reconstruction versus other development policies at regional and national level.