- Convenors:
-
Oliver Hensengerth
(Northumbria University)
Pham Dang Tri Van (Mekong Institute)
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- Chair:
-
Matt Baillie Smith
(Northumbria University)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Climate justice, just transitions & environmental futures
Short Abstract
The interdisciplinary panel discusses the integration of local and scientific knowledge for early warning systems. Situated in the just transitions literature, we explore local experiences of hazards, interactions between local and government initiatives, and how to engage knowledge hierarchies.
Description
In 2022, the UN launched its “Early Warning for All” initiative. The aim is, by 2027, to protect everyone from hazards with an early warning system. However, to be meaningful to all, such systems need to bridge scientific and local knowledge and incorporate gender-sensitive approaches (Shah et al. 2022). Doing so requires a better understanding of how people experience hazards and how new forms of marginalisation develop. For new technologies, this raises questions of what data is relevant to people, how to translate data into actionable knowledge, and how to avoid reproduction of inequalities (van Ginkel and Biradar 2021).
We situate ourselves within the literature on just transitions, specifically on the role of knowledge production and exclusion (Nikolaeva 2024). We link this to the literature on everyday adaptation, foregrounding the often-invisible ways in which adaptation forms part of everyday lives (Börner et al. 2021).
We ask: how do people experience well-known and newly emerging hazards? What sources of information are important? How do local processes of knowledge generation intersect with government interventions? Where in these processes do power dynamics unfold that disenfranchise people? Where are opportunities and barriers to integrate diverse datasets?
While our starting point is the current ISPF-British Council project “Adapting Crisis Responses to Salt-Droughts in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam”, we seek contributions from all the world’s regions and disaster contexts. We are particularly interested in mixed methods approaches. Contributions are invited from any discipline, such as political science, anthropology, engineering, human and physical geography, or international development.