Resettlement governance influences the climate resilience of disaster-displaced communities in Sri Lanka

When governments relocate disaster-displaced communities, success is typically measured by what gets built. This study asks whether that is the right measure. Comparing three governance models across resettlement sites in Kegalle and Ratnapura districts of Sri Lanka, we draw on secondary synthesis of a 2019 cross-sectional household survey of 435 families conducted by the National Building Research Organisation, together with primary expert interviews and field observations conducted in December 2024. The three models are donor-driven construction, government relocation sites and individual relocation sites, in which households select their own land and direct construction with a government grant. All three delivered equivalent physical standards. The models diverged sharply on every outcome that governs long-term recovery. Individual relocation site households showed substantially stronger social capital, with 89% reporting very close neighbour ties and zero host community conflicts, greater land tenure security, with 97% holding legal deeds compared to 28% in donor-driven models, and greater livelihood preservation, with 70% retaining garden access compared to 10 to 13% in top-down models. Drawing on Cernea’s Impoverishment Risks and Reconstruction framework, the analysis shows that governance model determines which impoverishment risks are reversed and which are transferred to a new address. Comparable evidence from Mozambique, Bangladesh and eight countries across Africa and Asia confirms the pattern is not specific to Sri Lanka. For the approximately 26 million people newly displaced by natural hazard each year, how resettlement is governed matters at least as much as how well it is built.