Paper short abstract:

Understanding the construction of climate risks and practices of risk management is necessary for appropriate DRR. This paper analyses practices of risk management and their socio-spatial implications highlighting theoretical approaches from human geography and social practice theory.

Paper long abstract:

Flood events are on the rise in media coverage, insurance profiles as well as in social & natural sciences. There is hardly a populated world region, where floods would not be part of people´s lives, whether as disruptive events, as "normal" processes or as new threats in a climate change future. Flood risk however is a discourse made use of to pursue various and sometimes contradicting goals.

Looking at the case of rural Mexican settlements along the River Usumacinta, different risks constructed and negotiated by various actors can be identified. In the global political context of climate change and the specific political context of the state of Chiapas, the analysis of flood risk, a term that would seem clearly and objectively measurable, becomes a process revealing complex patterns of practices and power asymmetries.

This paper argues for a critical analysis of "climate risks" and of the design of global strategies for Disaster Risk Reduction. Applying the concept of "riskscapes" (Mueller-Mahn 2013) and developing it further in the light of a "new societist social ontology" presented by Theodore Schatzki (2002, 2003), this paper wants to contribute to a deeper understanding of risk related practices. Results of ethnographic research carried out by the author in Mexico in 2014 and 2015 give first hand insight into complex "riskscapes" in the making. Understanding and conceptualising the socio-spatial implications of risks may contribute to a development of holistic strategies for disaster risk reduction in the future.