We’re all in this together? Community resilience in the face of ongoing crises: the case of Kaikōura

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic represents the second major crisis facing Kaikōura in the past decade. The pandemic was preceded by a large magnitude earthquake in November 2016 that damaged critical infrastructure and lifelines essential to the tourism industry, resulting in tourism expenditure and visitor numbers plummeting in this town reliant on the tourism industry. On the surface, the township bounced back remarkably well; the community mobilised its collective resources to cope with the crisis, and the earthquake provided opportunities for new collaborative initiatives and potential for transformation of the industry. Recovery marketing efforts were by most accounts a success, thanks to significant government support for the district, and within two years the tourists had returned, and visitor expenditure had surpassed pre-earthquake figures. Numerous accounts in popular media and academic research described how the tourism and hospitality sector and community seemed to have emerged from the crisis with greater resilience. While the rhetoric for greater community resilience in Kaikōura was strong in the aftermath of the earthquake, the reality seems somewhat different, and the town’s adaptive capacity to new crises has been challenged by the pandemic. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, this paper presents a reflexive analysis of Kaikōura community’s response to their second crisis in five years. We argue that to understand community resilience in Kaikōura we need to consider the uncomfortable economic realities, systemic inequalities and governance structures resistant to change, including community members’ differing access to social networks and other resources which act as barriers to a more resilient future for the district.