Oil Spills and Community Resilience: Uneven Impacts and Protection in Historical Perspective

Coastal Louisiana is populated by a diverse population with Native American, French, African, Asian, and Spanish backgrounds.  Over the centuries, most of these residents have become marginalized to some degree from the state’s political leadership.  Each has also developed natural resource dependent economic practices that make them particularly vulnerable in the wake of oil spills.  Our review of historical oil spill incidents since the 1930s reveals the emergence of resilient practices at the community and the state/corporate levels to cope with the loss of oyster or shrimp harvests due to occasional major spills.  As consumers of marine life, Louisiana’s coastal populations have faced exposure to contaminated foods and have suffered loss of income when harvests were disrupted.  We evaluate the community responses  from the 1930s to the 2010s in terms of Wilbanks’ four elements of resilience (anticipate, reduce, respond, and recover) and compare community inherent resilience practices to the formal resilient practices promoted by government and corporate entities. The talk will conclude with an evaluation of the areas of strength in community resilience as a measure of a healthy community, and the areas where improvements can be made to integrate inherent with formal resilience capacities.