Understanding recovery: The role of values, rules, and knowledge in recovery of winegrowers after the 2021 floods in the Ahr valley

Against the backdrop of the unpreventable impacts of climate change and ongoing debates about how manifested losses and damages from climate related disasters could be addressed , it is important to not only make progress in climate change mitigation and adaptation, but to also engage with the topic of post-disaster recovery. The guiding principle of recovery as defined in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 is “Building Back Better”, and involves systematically incorporating disaster risk reduction measures into the recovery process. Under this framing, research to date has focused primarily on how to implement Building Back Better as a top-down process. Offering an alternative approach to understanding recovery, I investigate how values, rules, and knowledge shape the recovery pathways of winegrowers after the 2021 floods in the Ahr valley.

We derive from conducted interviews, that most affected winegrowers plan to continue winegrowing at their former location. The decision is partly driven by the perception that winegrowing is generally a profitable business opportunity and by values like achievement and self-direction.. Along the wine production chain, the most fundamental change is observable in the marketing and sales section. As technical rules inherent in existing sales infrastructure like restaurants and hotels are broken, while the digital infrastructure improved significantly in response to COVID-19, a long-lasting shift towards online markets and wholesale is discussed among winegrowers. Knowledge of the threat of a flood recurrence or other climate change-related impacts does not fundamentally influence first recovery decisions.

To better understand ‘building back better’ in recovery, we analyse how affected actors envision their recovery, along with the interaction of values, rules, and knowledge. We reveal dilemmas that prevent the implementation of Building Back Better in recovery and stories of hope, which enable it. On this basis, we argue that recovery on the ground must be understood as part of ongoing political struggles.. Furthermore, establishing a plan to adapt to climate change before a disaster strikes can serve as a guiding vision for recovery. Measuring the recovery success as the time passed until the disaster site is physically reconstructed, as often done,  falls short of considering aspects of recovery like building a shared memory of the disaster as a basis for risk awareness. Lastly, the co-occurrence of COVID-19 and the flood showed how winegrowers were better equipped to respond to the flood due to recovery and adaptation measures previously set up in response to COVID-19. Building on this observation, we suggest moving forward with the idea of “systemic recovery”, propagating the success of interventions from one hazard to another.