- 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.
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This study develops an early warning model for drought and salinity intrusion in the Mekong Delta, integrating vulnerability assessment, policy analysis, and climate change impact simulations to support mitigation and sustainable adaptation based on predictive indicators.
Paper long abstract
In the context of increasingly climate change, drought and salinity intrusion have become major challenges to livelihoods and sustainable development in the Mekong Delta (MD). Sea-level rise has intensified and spatially expanded salinity intrusion, affecting agricultural production, livelihoods, and the daily lives of local communities. In response, numerous early warning systems have been developed to support risk management and decision-making. However, in practice, many of these systems remain predominantly technically oriented and have yet to fully reflect how local communities perceive information, make decisions, and adapt in their everyday lives.
This study approaches drought and salinity intrusion from an equity-and people-centred perspective, emphasizing the role of local knowledge, lived experience, and access to resources in shaping adaptive responses to climate-related risks. Accordingly, the study aims to monitor and track the dynamics of drought and salinity intrusion in the MD; to develop an early warning model that is context-specific and responsive to local needs; and to project the impacts of drought and salinity intrusion under different climate change and sea-level rise scenarios. These efforts seek to provide a scientific basis for proposing sustainable adaptation solutions.
The study addresses key research questions: How do different community groups experience and respond to drought and salinity intrusion in their daily lives and production activities? What sources of information do they access, use, and perceive as reliable in their decision-making processes? How can local communities better understand and engage with the ways in which climate change adaptation policies and intervention programmes are implemented in practice?
Paper short abstract
In this paper I will present examples of how Local and National Humanitarians (LNHs) working in Somalia and Somaliland are successfully combining local knowledge with new technology and information to assist communities to adapt to and mitigate against climate change.
Paper long abstract
My research aims to better understand the needs and challenges of local and national humanitarians (LNHs) in addressing climate-related threats in Somalia and Somaliland and examine how the local knowledge and experiences of LNHWs are valued, shared and documented.
During interviews with LNHs I have documented examples of projects which have successfully combined local knowledge with new technology and information. I will briefly present these in this paper as examples of the importance of both acknowledging and engaging with local and indigenous knowledge, alongside utilising and promoting new technologies and new sources of information.
The examples I plan to present include community involvement in improving Early Warning Systems (EWS), consultations between engineers and community leaders to locate and drill new water supplies, and networks of knowledge sharing between communities to share new building methods, materials and agricultural practices which bolster climate resilience and disaster risk preparedness.
I will conclude by arguing that these examples reflect the need for a continued push towards actual localisation within the humanitarian sector, both in terms of programming and delivery. I will also argue that the international community has a responsibility to continue to collaborate with countries on the front line of the climate crisis. The focus of this should be on the development and dissemination of climate and meteorological data and climate adaptation methods and technologies, to design effective and sustainable humanitarian interventions in the face of climate related threats.
Paper short abstract
Systemic corruption and uneven data ecosystems undermine the justice and equity of Early Warning Systems (EWS); thereby producing exclusionary multi-hazard prone communities. The paper presents gender-transformative indicators through intersectional data feminist lenses for inclusive EWS.
Paper long abstract
Early Warning Systems (EWS) gain effectiveness through the data governance systems that inform them. This paper examines how misaligned transparency regimes, compounded by systemic corruption, produce data injustices that weaken disaster risk reduction (DRR) and anticipatory finance for marginalized communities. Data feminism assists in revealing the nexus of corruption and gender-unaware early warning systems as impediments to inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction. The paper establishes that corruption operates as a data‑quality parameter in procurement cascades, opaque intermediaries as well as misclassification of finance. The paper examines data feminist theories such as data ecofeminism critically to analyse the downstream effects on EWS triggers, false positives, and inequitable resource allocation. The paper displays how corruption leads to distortion in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) outcomes for marginalized communities. The paper presents gender-transformative indicators designed to make anticipatory action auditable, equitable, and responsive to marginalized sections of communities.
The paper therefore advocates for integrating diverse local datasets into people‑centred EWS for epistemic and practical data justice. The paper achieves this by critical examination of data feminism and data cyberfeminism as gendered theories for data justice in EWS.
Paper short abstract
Landslides are a pervasive hazard in Nepal and challenging to predict. Working with community partners, we utilise a novel acoustic emissions sensor to ‘listen’ to subsurface movement and bring these data into conversation with local observations to make sense of when and how landslides occur.
Paper long abstract
Landslides are a pervasive hazard in rural Nepal resulting in loss of life and livelihood. Viewed from both a metaphysical and a physical environmental perspective, local and Indigenous understandings of the causes and triggering mechanisms of landslide processes in the Nepal Himalaya are rich and insightful. Questions, however, remain regarding the possibility for more reliable prediction with the aim of reducing the risk of future landslides. From a scientific perspective, landslide prediction is challenging. This largely reflects a tendency to focus on surface conditions and processes, including the monitoring of rainfall and responses of the land surface such as the development of ground cracks. While an important part of the puzzle, these alone are often unreliable indicators of movement, as they overlook the stresses and strains acting underground (e.g., rock strength and water pressures) that are immensely challenging to monitor but which are important in defining where and when landslides might occur. Working with community and government partners, we utilise novel acoustic emissions (AE) sensors to ‘listen’ to subsurface movement associated with ongoing landsliding in ten locations across central Nepal. We bring the AE data into conversation with data on weather and soil moisture and, most importantly, local observations and contextually attuned understandings of processes acting above and below ground, to collaboratively make sense of how landslides occur. Through this we aim to provide more tangible, relatable indicators of movement, translating data into actionable knowledge that is locally owned and used.