Conceptualizing community in disaster risk management

Community resilience is often assessed in disaster risk management (DRM) research and it has been argued that it should be strengthened for more robust DRM. However, the term community is seldom precisely defined and it can be understood in many ways. We argue that it is crucial to explore the concept of community within the context of DRM in more detail. We identify three dominating views of conceptualizing community (place-based community, interaction-based community, community of practice and interest), and discuss the relevance of these conceptualizations. We base this discussion on quantitative and qualitative empirical and policy document data regarding flood and storm risk management in Finland, wildfire risk management in Norway and volcanic risk management Iceland. According to our results, all three conceptualizations of community are visible but in differing situations. Our results emphasize the strong role of public sector in DRM in the studied countries. In disaster preparedness and response, a professionalized community of practice and interest appear to be the most prominent within all three countries. The interaction-based community of informal social networks is of less relevance, although its role is more visible in disaster response and recovery. The place-based (local) community is visible in some of the policy documents, but otherwise its role is rather limited. Finally, we argue that the measured resilience of a community depends on how the community is conceptualized and operationalized, and that the measures to strengthen resilience of a particular community should be different depending on what the focal community is.Peer reviewe

Configurations of community in flood risk management

Despite a notable increase in the literature on community resilience, the notion of 'community' remains underproblematised. This is evident within flood risk management (FRM) literature, in which the understanding and roles of communities may be acknowledged but seldom discussed in any detail. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how community networks are configured by different actors, whose roles and responsibilities span spatial scales within the context of FRM. Accordingly, the authors analyse findings from semi-structured interviews, policy documents, and household surveys from two flood prone areas in Finnish Lapland. The analysis reveals that the ways in which authorities, civil society, and informal actors take on multiple roles are intertwined and form different types of networks. By implication, the configuration of community is fuzzy, elusive and situated, and not confined to a fixed spatiality. The authors discuss the implications of the complex nature of community for FRM specifically, and for community resilience more broadly. They conclude that an analysis of different actors across scales contributes to an understanding of the configuration of community, including community resilience, and how the meaning of community takes shape according to the differing aims of FRM in combination with differing geographical settings.Peer reviewe

Bonden og landskapet. Historier om natursyn, praksis og moral i det jærske landskapet

Tiltagende miljøproblemer som resultat av et stadig mer intensivt drevet jordbruk går som en rød tråd gjennom den norske agrare etterkrigshistorien. Identifiseringen av miljøproblemene har ledet fram til grunnleggende endringer i norsk landbrukspolitikk. Særlig har det i løpet av de siste 25 årene tvunget seg fram et økende fokus på natur-, landskaps- og bredere miljøverdier knyttet til landbruksnæringen. Denne ideologiske dreiningen har hatt konsekvenser for bønders gårdsdrift. En sentral utfordring i denne avhandlingen er å kaste lys over hvordan politisk-ideologiske endringer påvirker, ikke bare bønders praksis i gårdsdriften, men også deres oppfatninger av natur og landskap som grunnlag for praksis. Empirisk retter denne avhandlingen seg mot hvordan et utvalg bønder i tre kommuner på Jæren i Rogaland tenker om, produserer og tar stilling til den natur og det landskap som de forvalter innenfor rammene av endrede landbruks og miljøpolitiske føringer

The ClimRes Survey, January 2018

"The ClimRes Survey, January 2018" is a nationally representative survey about communities in Norway and potential experiences with extreme weather events

Morality, mobility and citizenship: Legitimising mobile subjectivities in a contested outdoors

acceptedVersio

Bærekraftig beiting i fjellet: Hvilke prinsipper legger sentrale interessegrupper til grunn for å balansere mellom ressursbruk og ressursgrunnlag?

Husdyrbeiting med sau har påvirket fjellandskapet i Norge gjennom flere tusen år. Den regionale variasjonen i tetthet av sau har imidlertid gitt oss ulike landskap og dermed ulikt biologisk mangfold. Vi mangler i dag et omforent syn på hva som er et bærekraftig beitetrykk i fjellet. I denne studien har vi gjennomført en dialogprosess med sentrale interessegrupper der målet har vært å komme frem til anbefalinger for en ny forvaltningspraksis for sauebeite i fjellet. Representanter for 12 organisasjoner og institusjoner har deltatt i tre intensive workshops over en periode på tre år. Deltakerne representerer ulike sektorer sentrale for sauebeiting som ressursbruk. Tre spørsmål var utgangspunkt for workshopene: (1) Hvilket landskap ser vi for oss i fjellet i 2030? (2) Hvilket målbilde for beitebruk i fjellet er ønskelig? (3) Hvordan utvikle en bærekraftig forvaltningspraksis for beitebruk i fjellet? Resultatene viser at interessegruppene har en samlet visjon for bærekraftig beiting: De argumenter for et moderat til høyt beitetrykk. Denne vurderingen baserer seg på en diskusjon av tre grunnleggende spørsmål; hva er bærekraft, hva er bærekraftig beitebruk og hvilke tålegrenser finnes for beitebruk? Studien undersøker komplekse samfunnsmessige verdivurderinger som ligger til grunn for oppfatninger om ressursbruk og ressursgrunnlag i fjellet, men også avveininger mellom ulike landskapstyper og økosystemtjenester som beitebruken skaper.Sheep grazing has over several thousand years impacted on mountain landscapes in Norway. Regional variations in sheep densities have, however, produced different landscapes and hence variations in biodiversity. There is currently a lack of agreement over what constitutes a sustainable grazing pressure in the mountains. This study is based in a series of workshops with stakeholders where the aim has been to formulate recommendations for renewed management practices for mountain sheep grazing in Norway. Representatives from 12 different NGO’s and state institutions have participated in the meetings held over a period of three years. The participants represent a range of sectors key to sheep grazing and resource use. The meetings were based in three questions: (1) Which landscape do we envision in the mountains in 2030? (2) Mountain grazing – what are desirable aims? (3) How do we develop sustainable management practices for mountain grazing? The results demonstrate that the stakeholders hold a common vision for sustainable grazing: they want to see a grazing pressure that is moderate to high. This vision is based in a discussion of three fundamental questions: what do we talk about when we talk about sustainability in general? What, then, constitutes sustainable grazing, and which carrying capacity can be identified for mountain grazing? This study investigates complex societal value judgements that are fundamental to resource use and resource base in the mountains, as well as trade-offs between different types of landscapes and ecosystem services produced by grazing

Ecosystem services as an integrative framework: what is the potential?

Ecosystems approaches, and among them the ecosystem services (ES) framework, are held as promising vehicles for holistic thinking which is usually taken to mean integration of society and nature. The notion of ES is also seen to aid us in saying something about how and what people value in nature. It is hence surprising that among a huge number of scientific works couched in terms in ES, still relatively few explore the explicit engagement of such concepts with stakeholders with respect to empirical issues, including integration. Motivated by a need to empirically test rather than assume the integrative work of ES, we ask: what ways of using the framework as a stakeholder tool are invited, and does integration unfold in practice? Our evidence comes from a study of a group of stakeholders’ perspectives on sustainable management of sheep grazing in low alpine landscapes in the south of Norway. According to the stakeholders, grazing intensity, type and spatiality cannot be understood and arrived at without accounting for how grazing pressure is the result of the co-production of nature and society. By way of four empirical examples, we demonstrate 1) the integrative agency ES can have, 2) how ES can work to integrate despite the framework, 3) how ES can work against integration, and 4) the implicit agency of ES for the co-production of sustainability and grazing pressures. The study demonstrates that there are particular weaknesses in the concept as an integrative device regarding the invisibility of human co-agency. Furthermore, the precise methodological framing of the research is found to be crucial for whether and how human co-agency is made visible through the framework, and thus how ES works as an integrative framework

Climate change and natural hazards:the geography of community resilience

Abstract This special issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography originates from the research project ‘Climate change and natural hazards: the geography of community resilience in Norway’, 1 based in the Department of Geography at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The project was designed as a response to the Research Council of Norway’s call for increased knowledge of how society can and should adjust to meet the challenges of climate change. A key purpose of the project was to investigate what form community resilience to climate-related natural hazards might take in different Norwegian municipalities and how it could be strengthened

Holding property in trust: kinship, law, and property enactment on Norwegian smallholdings

In this paper we discuss relations between kinship, law, and property enactment. A recent revision of The Norwegian Act Relating to Concession in the Acquisition of Real Property is designed to influence the relation between subjects (property owners) and objects (properties) through ceasing the obligation of residency and cultivation on certain properties, which in turn is intended to increase sales prices of the respective properties. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in four Norwegian local authority districts, we argue that responsibility for past, present, and future generations of family or kin is highly important in property enactment. Although relations between subjects and objects are powerful and inform policy actions, relations between social subjects might be just as influential and powerful. When enacting properties, people may live in more complicated worlds than is often assumed. We assert that further research in legal geography and the emerging field of ‘geographies of relatedness’ might profit from seeing kinship and property as coconstituted.