Exploring the integration of local and scientific knowledge in early warning systems for disaster risk reduction: a review

The occurrence and intensity of some natural hazards (e.g. hydro-meteorological) increase due to climate change, with growing exposure and socio-economic vulnerability, leading to mounting risks. In response, Disaster Risk Reduction policy and practice emphasize people-centred Early Warning Systems (EWS). Global policies stress the need for including local knowledge and increasing the literature on integrating local and scientific knowledge for EWS. In this paper, we present a review to understand and outline how local and scientific knowledge integration is framed in EWS, namely: (1) existing integration approaches, (2) where in the EWS integration happens, (3) outcomes, (4) challenges, and (5) enablers. The objective is to critically evaluate integration and highlight critical questions about assumptions, goals, outcomes, and processes. In particular, we unpack the impact of power and knowledges as plural. We find a spectrum of integration between knowledges in EWS, mainly with dichotomy at the start: focus on people or technology. The most popular integration approaches are participatory methods such as ‘GIS mapping’ (technology) and methods that focus on ‘triangulation’ (people). We find that critical analysis of power relations and social interaction is either missed or framed as a challenge within integration processes. Knowledge is often seen as binary, embedded in the concept of ‘integration’. It is important to know what different knowledges can and cannot do in different contexts and acknowledge the hybrid reality of knowledge used for EWS. We argue that how we approach different knowledges in EWS has fundamental implications for the approaches to integration and its meaning. To this end, attention to the social processes, power dynamics, and context is crucial

Unpacking Community Participation in Research: A Systematic Literature Review of Community-based and Participatory Research in Alaska

Although concepts of “community” and “participation” have been heavily critiqued in the social sciences, they remain uncritically applied across disciplines, leading to problems that undermine both research and practice. Nevertheless, these approaches are advocated for, especially in Indigenous contexts. To assess the use of these concepts, we conducted a systematic literature review of community-based and participatory research in Alaska, USA, where social change has been rapid, having ramifications for social organization, and where participatory and community-based approaches are heavily advocated for by Alaska Native organizations. Conceptualizations of community and participation were extracted and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The majority of articles showed a lack of critical consideration around both terms, although this was especially the case in reporting around community. While this lack of critical consideration could lead to issues of local elite co-opting research, an alternative interpretation is that Western sociological literature surrounding community is not transferable to Indigenous contexts

International humanitarian narratives of disasters, crises and Indigeneity

Narratives are a means of making sense of disasters and crises. The humanitarian sector communicates stories widely, carrying with them representations of peoples and events. Such communications have been critiqued for misrepresenting and/or silencing the root causes of disasters and crises, depoliticising them. What has not been researched is how such communications represent disasters and crises in Indigenous settings. This is important because processes such as colonisation are often the root cause of disaster for Indigenous Peoples, but are typically masked in communications. We identify and characterise narratives in humanitarian communications involving Indigenous Peoples by conducting a narrative analysis of humanitarian communications. We identify five narratives: humanitarians act, attributing culpability, the people help the people, the nation tackles disaster, and innovating our way out of disaster. Narratives differ based upon how the humanitarians who produce them think disasters and crises should be governed. Most articles carved out a space for humanitarian action, whilst others focused on witnessing, reporting and responsibilising international audiences. We conclude that humanitarian communications reflect more about the relationship between the international humanitarian community and its audience than reality, and reflect on how narratives mask global processes that link audiences of humanitarian communications with Indigenous Peoples

Shifting Safeties and Mobilities on the Land in Arctic North America: A Systematic Approach to Identifying the Root Causes of Disaster

Amid the surge in research on mobility and migration in the context of environmental change, little research has focused on the experiences of people for whom travel is cyclical and a part of daily, weekly, or seasonal life. For Inuit in Arctic North America, the land is the heart of cultural and community life. Disruption to time spent on the land is reported to impact the emotional health and well-being of individuals and communities. There is concern that environmental change is creating barriers to safe travel, constituting a creeping disaster. We systematically review and evaluate the literature for discussion of barriers to travel for Inuit in Arctic North America, using an approach from the field of disaster anthropology to identify root causes of constraints to mobility. We identify root causes of risk and barriers to time spent on the land. These emerge from historic and contemporary colonial policy and inequality, as opposed to environmental hazards per se, impacting people’s mobility in profound ways and enacting a form of slow violence. These results suggest a need to understand the underlying processes and institutions that put people at risk

A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of responses

A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of responses