Our insights are derived from a review of the literature, empirical findings, and transdisciplinary collaborations with two local nongovernmental and non-profit organisations working locally: the Gili Eco Trust 2 and the Indonesia Biru Foundation 3. This paper fuses the main impacts of and opportunities presented by recent disasters on the island, and provides an overview of the factors contributing to community resilience (Faulkner, Brown, and Quinn, 2018). By spotlighting Gili Trawangan, we intend to provide an accessible synthesis of existing research and practical experiences, along with an example that broadly reflects many other small island tourism destinations in Indonesia and emerging tropical economies around the world. Analysis of community resilience positions internal capacities as the core features enabling short- and long-term recovery geared towards sustainable development (Berkes and Ross, 2013 Faulkner, Brown, and Quinn, 2018 Partelow, 2020). Even when external aid is available for disaster relief, it cannot directly establish the social capital and emotive and cognitive foundation needed to rebuild well-being from within (Aldrich and Meyer, 2015 Sadri et al., 2017). More specifically, community resilience is needed for effective disaster response and recovery in the absence of external aid from states, non-profit organisations, or private sources (Paton, 2003 Nakagawa and Shaw, 2004 Brown and Westaway, 2011 Berkes and Ross, 2013). As a result, scientific interest encompasses a wide variety of topics concerning sustainable tourism, with current efforts often employing inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches that work together with communities and local development endeavours to understand better and catalyse sustainability transformations (Hind et al., 2015 Glaser et al., 2018). Collective action and community-centred development initiatives are often critically important processes to address basic problems and challenges, as well as to ensure that such tourism projects can meet livelihood needs while maintaining the cultural identity and environmental integrity that often attract tourists and ensure local well-being. Globally, tourism development on small islands, particularly those in the tropics, face unique challenges owing to the likelihood of isolation from mainland infrastructure and society (Peterson, 2020 Zhang and Managi, 2020 Walker, Lee, and Li, 2021). In this paper, community resilience (Faulkner, Brown, and Quinn, 2018) is examined in the context of recent disasters that have produced governance challenges and opportunities for sustainable development of the tourism sector. While the negative impacts of such events are many, there are also opportunities to rebuild and rethink the island's trajectory and governance strategies. The island has experienced numerous disasters in the past, including volcanic eruptions, but a couple of major earthquakes in August 2018 (Partelow, 2020) and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have challenged the tourism economy extensively and called into question its viability in recent years. Before COVID-19 struck in early 2020, the island was receiving up to one million tourists per year, supporting thousands of local livelihoods and hundreds of businesses centred on more than 30 SCUBA centres. Since the early 1990s, Gili Trawangan, a small island off the coast of Lombok, Indonesia, has expanded from a few pop-up bungalows to a world-renowned tourism destination focused on SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) diving at local coral reefs. It concludes by laying out sustainability opportunities going forward.
The paper draws on a community resilience framework premised on social capital and collective action theories to position the island's ability to transition towards sustainable tourism in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. A brief review of the governance challenges facing Gili Trawangan sets up the analysis of the findings and the presentation of new empirical insights into how the island's communities have dealt with two unique disaster scenarios over the past three years. These viewpoints centre on the impacts of, as well as the short- and long-term adaptation strategies and sustainability opportunities associated with, two disasters that occurred in rapid succession: the earthquakes that struck Lombok in 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020. This paper contains transdisciplinary reflections from both scientists and local NGO (nongovernmental organisation) managers on the international small island tourism destination of Gili Trawangan, Indonesia.
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