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Paper short abstract

Flooding demands interdisciplinary & intercultural solutions. Our Semangat Tasik (Lakehood) framework examines Orang Asli flood resilience in Malaysia’s Tasik Chini. It integrates hydrology, spirituality, culture, and politics, revealing Indigenous worldviews and adaptation strategies despite risks.

Paper long abstract

We develop the Semangat Tasik or Lakehood framework to foreground the constellation of traditional ecological knowledge, more-than-human relationships, Indigenous Peoples’ worldviews and practices, and socionatural entities informing flood risk management in Pahang, Malaysia. Anchored on a political ecology approach and inspired by the Riverhood Framework (Boelens et al., 2023), we propose a multi-dimensional framework to understand how Orang Asli (Jakun tribe) communities conceptualise and live with flooding in Tasik Chini (Chini Lake), the second largest natural freshwater lake in Peninsular Malaysia. Semangat Tasik conceptualises flooding into four interrelated dimensions: flooding as hydrological-environmental, flooding as metaphysical-spiritual, flooding as material-cultural, and flooding as developmental-political. First, Semangat Tasik sees flooding as an environmental and seasonal phenomenon that naturally inundates the land, which could threaten lives and properties. Second, Semangat Tasik embraces flooding as the material manifestation of the Orang Asli’s worldly beliefs of the metaphysical and spiritual entities inhabiting and flowing through the lake. Third, Semangat Tasik welcomes flooding as a positive process of regular renewal that fertilises the soil, clears the sediments, and nourishes their natural environment, which are integral for Orang Asli’s forest- and lake-based cultural identity and livelihoods. Lastly, Semangat Tasik problematizes flooding as the continuous reminder of the injustices faced by Indigenous communities from politically motivated and socially unfair development projects that undermine their knowledge, well-being, and long-standing connections to the lake. Ultimately, the Semangat Tasik or Lakehood framework offers a heuristic to critically understand the more-than-human, place-based knowledge and practices they employ to adapt to floods.