Paper short abstract:

The paper mobilizes the panel’s core theme of disaster risk governance to detail the role of knowledge practices in Ghana’s disaster risk reduction strategy, paying particular attention to the knowledge contribution of local communities in central level planning and prediction.

Paper long abstract:

In October 2023, emergency spillage of Ghana’s historically iconic Akosombo hydroelectric dam resulted in the displacement of over 35,000 people in the country’s politically contentious Volta Region. Positioned in the region’s history of political marginalization (Nugent 1995, 2002), the paper offers an analysis of the politics of intervention in the face of intersecting vulnerabilities resulting from effects of climate change, infrastructural limitations, and unresolved political and economic crises. The paper mobilizes the panel’s core theme of disaster risk governance to detail the role of knowledge practices – ranging from remote sensing data and hydrological models to the observation of sentinel species and oral historical records – in Ghana’s disaster risk reduction strategy, paying particular attention to the knowledge contribution of local communities and the interactions of multiple orders of validity in central level planning and prediction.