Livelihood vulnerability of post-disaster rehabilitation in Banda Aceh and its neighbouring gampongs

The reconstruction regime provides the foundation for the progress and sustainability of development in disaster-affected areas. The process and results of the intervention have relations and implications for change, resilience, and vulnerability of people’s livelihoods. This study aims to assess the dynamics of change, livelihood aspects, and social vulnerability of communities in Banda Aceh and surrounding gampongs. This study used a household approach as the unit of analysis. The survey was conducted on 1000 households in 50 gampongs using proportional random sampling. Data analysis employs a descriptive approach. The main findings of this study show changes in livelihood structure, especially in the trade and services sector. The condition of people’s livelihood assets is relatively moderate, and human capital and financial capital have a weak score compared to others. The level of social vulnerability of the community is low, where the economic aspect is an important indicator that contributes to vulnerability.


Introduction
The mega-disaster in 2004 had implications for enormous changes in the lives and livelihoods of people in Banda Aceh City.The damage caused has disrupted livelihood assets and sustainability [1,2].The rehabilitation and reconstruction regimes have provided the foundation for various aspects of life.The recovery and growth of physical development is very noticeable and takes place relatively very quickly [3][4][5].The economic growth rate of the community shows progress, but it is relatively slow, vulnerable, and easily shaken [6].The interventions to restore the community livelihood sector experience challenges including market disruption, limited infrastructure, limited capital, inadequate skills, limited opportunities, and employment [2], including socio-demographic changes and regional development agendas.Therefore, community resilience is one of the important elements for achieving economic recovery and development, social capital, and community competence [7][8][9].Understanding the elements of progress, development, and growth physically and in the socioeconomic context is a valuable experience for post-recovery community development while reducing vulnerability development as an important pillar of long-term recovery.Approaching almost two decades after the experience of the 2004 disaster, the recovery process and its development programs have contributed to the dynamics of social, economic, and physical environmental changes in Banda Aceh City and its surroundings.The changes that occur are logical and unavoidable consequences of a development event and process [10] and have implications for the threat landscape and vulnerability of society.
It is therefore important to recognize the variability of vulnerable populations [11] and their sensitivity to exposure.Vulnerability has a complex and dynamic nature, changing in space and time [12].According to [13,14], vulnerability studies rest on three main pillars: first, identification of conditions that make people or places vulnerable to an event [15]; second, social conditions as a measure of resilience to threats [16]; and third, the integration of potential exposure and resilience focused on specific people and places or regions [17].
Various arguments for vulnerability progression include access to resources (including information, knowledge, and technology); access to political power and representation; social capital (including social networks and connections); beliefs and customs; landscape and physical environment; weak and physically limited individuals; type and density of infrastructure; and life paths [11,12,16,17].This factor continues to evolve and adapt to changes in human and environmental conditions [18] that affect assets, strategies, and sustainability of their livelihoods.
The construction of livelihood vulnerability can be seen as a dynamic activity, the result of changes in the capacity landscape, and adjustment to the changes that occur [19].The experience of the 2004 mega-disaster certainly provides lessons on the resilience of the people of Banda Aceh City, but exposure to the Covid-19 disaster some time ago also has implications for livelihood resilience [20][21][22].This article aims to understand the dynamics of livelihood change, assess the condition of household livelihood assets, and aspects of their vulnerability to the situation of the community after rapid recovery and development in Banda Aceh City and its surroundings.

Research design
This study employed a survey method of households living permanently in Banda Aceh City and surrounding gampong as a unit of analysis.This research uses a descriptive approach by paying attention to the structure, patterns, and how some phenomena occur.This approach seeks to describe a phenomenon, event, and occurrence that occurs in the present moment by describing the event that is the center of attention to then be described as it is.The object of this study is the dynamics of postdisaster recovery livelihood changes and their implications for the sustainability of community livelihoods.The scope focuses on people's perceptions and experiences and their assessment of household conditions, vulnerabilities, and improvements in people's livelihood landscapes.

Population and Sample
The population in this study was all gampong and households in Banda Aceh City and its surroundings.Determination of gampong location samples is carried out by the equal interval method.Meanwhile, household samples are determined based on quota sampling techniques.The scope of the research area covers 91 gampongs in Banda Aceh City and 70 neighboring gampongs around it located in the Kabupaten Aceh Besar area with a distance of 1 km from the border of Banda Aceh City.With a sampling rate of 30.1%, 27 gampongs were obtained in Banda Aceh City and 23 gampongs in Aceh Besar.Then the total sample of gampong is 50 gampongs which is used as a research site.Each gampong was chosen proportionally as many as 20 respondents randomly so that 1,000 sample respondents were obtained.

Data collection and analysis
Data collection was conducted through household surveys.The survey was conducted using structured questionnaires, interviews, and direct observation of the landscape conditions of the respondents' neighbourhoods.Data analysis using descriptive methods.There are three stages of the analysis process [23]: data reduction, the process of summarizing, selecting, and focusing on important things from the research data that has been obtained; presentation of data, the process of presenting groups of data in the form of tabulations, graphs, pictograms, and others; and conclusion and verification: stages of triangulation and validation for inference.

Dynamics change on livelihood
The dynamics of livelihood change is a condition that refers to changes that occur in the type of work carried out by an individual or the wider community in an area.Through a process and stages, changes in livelihood can occur due to factors that influence it and have economic, social, and cultural aspects [24].A shock event such as a disaster will affect assets and livelihood aspects such as damage, loss, and/or decline in economic value [24][25][26].The experience of the 2004 Aceh disaster and the Covid-19 pandemic has also had implications for people's assets and livelihood strategies in Banda Aceh City.
In general, the main livelihood structure of the population in Banda Aceh is divided into three main groups, namely small business, formal paid work, and temporary wage work (Fig. 3).The proportion of the population who have temporary wage work is also relatively large, generally, they work in types of construction work, services, trade, and other wage jobs.However, some residents depend on working in the informal sector, and aging people tend to survive through pensions received or support from family/other relatives.The distribution of sectors of the main sources of livelihood of the population is presented in Fig. 4. Small businesses run by the community are businesses engaged in trade such as groceries/kiosks, coffee shops, clothing/accessories stores, electronics stores, and miscellaneous goods stores; service sectors such as food, restaurants, transportation services, beauty houses, barbershops, and housekeepers; and technical fields of work such as equipment maintenance, tailoring/garment, construction, blacksmithing, carpentry, painting, welding, and so on.The population who work in the formal sector is predominantly employees among government institutions and there are also private employees.The population working in the formal sector (Fig. 5), mostly works as teachers, health workers, services, industry, finance, and the commercial sector.The proportion of average household income levels per month is presented in Fig. 6.There are still residents who claim a household income level of less than Rp.1 million per month.These are workers in the informal sector.The majority of households earning up to Rp.5 million per month are those who work in the formal sector and small businesses.Households that have high incomes are generally small business owners who have long carried out their business activities in the trade, service, and technical work sectors.
Over the past few years, half of respondents said they had experienced no change in their household income (Fig. 7).Poor conditions experienced by around 38 percent of households who claim to have decreased their household income level.According to them, the decline that occurred was more due to the pandemic situation which made it difficult for them to carry out their livelihood activities due to the restrictive policies implemented by the government.They generally work as temporary wage workers.In contrast, formal sector workers claim to have experienced an increase in income in recent years.The Covid-19 pandemic situation is felt to have provided a difficult experience for household livelihoods in Banda Aceh City (Fig. 8).More than half said they felt very worried about leaving the house to do any activity because there were restrictions on movement including work, and this had implications for job losses, reduced working hours, reduced salaries received, and reduced business income.Livelihood conditions are felt to be getting worse with the high prices of goods, so demand is also decreasing.Some claim that some have closed their businesses and/or changed business activities.Comparing the situation of disaster experience, reconstruction regime, and development activities, we can see the changes that occurred to the status of work in several time periods (Fig. 9).Independent employment status tends to experience an upward trend over time.Similar trends are also seen in the status of contract-based and informal sector employment.The structure of the population who have permanent employment status has also changed, generally working in the formal sector.The implications of development progress that occurred in Banda Aceh City have opened opportunities for residents to do business independently, especially small and medium enterprises and the service sector (Fig. 10).The types of construction and manufacturing work almost showed unchanged conditions.Many post-intervention reconstruction construction works have decreased demand.Those who work in this sector generally continue to get the same work from contractors where they previously worked for current construction activities.

Livelihood assets
The sustainable livelihoods framework identifies five key assets that influence the transformation of livelihood structures and processes as well as capital to illustrate resilience and access to resources.The five assets are human capital, natural capital, financial capital, physical capital, and social capital [27].Human capital is a measure of the quantity and quality of labor available.Natural capital describes natural resources as providers of environmental services and essential for livelihoods.Financial capital is the readiness and availability of capital stock to do business.Physical capital describes the condition of household resilience infrastructure.Social capital refers to networks and social relations that support livelihoods.In general, the description of household livelihood asset criteria in Banda Aceh City is moderate (Table 1).The lowest asset value contribution to this is human capital.Contributing factors, among others, measure the quality of human assets for livelihood are limited skills possessed to support or get decent work.In addition, the level of education also contributes to low scores where on average more than three-quarters of respondents only receive education up to secondary level.Another asset is the strength of the workforce owned by limited households.
The second element that also contributes to the weak value of livelihood assets is the stock of financial capital.This can be seen from the amount of accumulated household income obtained.The majority of households have an income level of less than Rp.5 million per month.Another financial attribute is limited ownership of economic assets that ensure survival and support better livelihood efforts.Meanwhile, the other three elements have high criterion values.Social capital assets have the highest value to support household livelihood strategies.This condition is illustrated by the values of gotong royong, mutual assistance, and active community group institutions as the key.Strong social networks contribute to a sense of security and comfort in living together with the surrounding environment.

Vulnerability contexts
Vulnerability occurs due to decreased community resilience in facing threat situations that occur in their environment due to the inability to manage their assets.Social vulnerability assessment uses three parameters, namely physical environmental aspects, economic aspects, and social institutional aspects.The physical environment aspect consists of three indicators, namely home ownership, access to electricity, and access to clean water.The economic aspect consists of eight indicators, namely income, employment status, number of workers, household structure, education level, economic assets, marital status, and health insurance.Meanwhile, the social institutional aspect consists of four indicators, namely the activeness of gotong royong activities, posyandu, recitation, and social gatherings (arisan).The vulnerability level of household livelihoods in Banda Aceh City is low (Table 2).This condition illustrates that the level of resilience of households for the sustainability of their livelihoods shows progressive conditions.Economic resilience is still a major issue for sustainable household livelihoods.The implication of low livelihood assets, especially human capital and financial capital, is an element that contributes to the value of household economic vulnerability.Education attributes, employment status, type of employment, level of wages received, and availability of jobs and labor are important aspects of household livelihood security.Other studies [28,29] also support this argument that economic vulnerability can be influenced by attributes of human and financial capital assets, including households with a large number of dependents and households headed by women.

Assessing livelihood asset and vulnerability contexts
The relationship between livelihood assets and the context of household livelihood vulnerability can be presented in Table 3.The results illustrate that households that have high livelihood assets have a low vulnerability level, and vice versa if the livelihood asset condition is low, the vulnerability level will be high.Moderate livelihood asset conditions also have a low level of vulnerability, but this can also describe moderate vulnerability conditions as well.Based on the results of the significance value test, it can be concluded that there is a relationship between livelihood assets and the context of household livelihood vulnerability in Banda Aceh City.This illustrates that the value of good livelihood assets contributes to the resilience of household livelihoods, and vice versa.

Conclusions
The transformation of the structure and development process after reconstruction has provided the foundation for the strategy and sustainability of people's livelihoods in Banda Aceh City.The livelihood aspects of the people of Banda Aceh are grouped into three main sources, namely small business, formal paid work and temporary wage work.Workers in the small business sector and the formal sector have relatively better income levels than other sectors.Changes in the development landscape and postreconstruction progress did not have a significant impact on household incomes, despite a very serious shock to the declining household economy, especially during the pandemic crisis.These changes also have implications for changes in status and type of work.There is an increasing trend towards the status of independent employment, contract-based work, and informal sector work.This type of independent work is the opening of opportunities to open and run small businesses in the trade, retail and service sectors.Meanwhile, the construction and manufacturing sectors stagnated.The condition of household livelihood assets in Banda Aceh has not been described as a very satisfactory condition.Human and financial capital have the biggest challenges that contribute to household livelihood assets.Nevertheless, the value of social capital of the community becomes an important element that contributes to livelihood strategy and sustainability.Such conditions have 1297 (2024) 012095 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1297/1/0120959 implications for the level of resilience of household livelihoods.Although economic vulnerability is still a major obstacle to being able to carry out a better livelihood.In sum, the condition of livelihood assets has a relationship with the context of resilience and sustainability of household livelihoods.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Main current source of household income

Figure 4 .Figure 5 .
Figure 4. Sector of main source of household income

Figure 6 . 7 .
Figure 6.Household income level per month Figure 7. Income changed in the last couple years

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Changing of job status

Figure 10 .
Figure 10.Changing of job type

Table 2 .
Vulnerability index

Table 3 .
The relationship between livelihood assets and vulnerability context a. 5 cells (55.6%) have expected count less than 5.The minimum expected count is .00.