Resiliency or Sustainability: Disaster Risk Reduction and Airport Development in the Ogasawara Islands

Abstract

This paper explores the key concepts behind resilience and sustainability, to identify areas where these concepts conflict and areas of commonality. Then, it examines how key stakeholders in the Ogasawara Islands, Japan, view local hazard vulnerabilities, and how the island could best address them within the context of the development of an airport. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, the authors identified that respondents were divided between maintaining environmental sustainability versus strengthening operational resiliency. Based on these results, an alternative approach to solve the controversy over the development of the airport, which could meet the demands of different groups within the islands, is proposed.