Its about the people: Climate Change Planning and the Community
“Increasing Australians’ resilience to climate change means putting people’s lived experience and knowledge first.”
I personally champion the call to action to have climate change planning and policy be community-based and centered on people's experience, especially that of the indigenous community. Most folklore and storytelling traditions within the indigenous community highlight specific vulnerabilities, climate trends, and associated solutions employed throughout generations that are unfortunately not picked up in our typical risk management processes. In focusing on community-based planning initiatives, we begin to fully understand the gaps, impacts, and vulnerabilities that are specific to the community under review as no two communities are the same. As the article promotes, community-based planning that involves the input, stories, experiences of the people are inherently proactive and will help them plan more effective adaptation solutions.
Therefore, I often stress the importance of intangible cultural heritage as being a part of this process. This type of heritage is often in the representation of oral tradition. A combination of science-based evidence and historic/narrative accounts help provide a more holistic view and often give way to relationships in previous lessons learned and solutions that a community may have employed successfully. The challenge is that most government policy is focused on post-disaster and not adaptation as discussed in the next section below and this often leaves out the process of working on community-based accounts.
This piece questions whether are not “we harnessing networks to enable a society to function effectively" and what does this entail? Furthermore, it is stressed in this article that any sort of climate change planning must be adaptive (versus post-disaster focused) and community based. This focus includes properly balancing initiatives for all forms of capital, including natural, human, social, financial and physical. We are not able to understand all these forms of capital without having the community involved because of the specific needs, challenges, and solutions that each community faces. It is continuously highlighted that though the climate data and risk modeling employed through traditional risk management processes is helpful, these data outputs may not be applicable to every community and may not allow them to make the most effective decisions pertaining to their specific vulnerabilities if there is no dialogue or interaction with the community.
Another key argument that the author makes is that we can obtain so much knowledge from the history and traditions of indigenous groups. The solutions and narratives expressed in these traditions are often based on relationships, belonging and responsibility to place and consider the social and economic well-being of the environment together. These values further foster proactive and preventative planning as shown as the Reimagining Climate Adaptation Summit discussed within the article.
The Reimagining Climate Adaptation Summit brought together individuals to consider the following four themes:
Learn from diverse knowledges and perspectives
Involve communities
Don't shy away from hard discussions
Consider all types of capital
All these themes and discussions centered on incorporating indigenous knowledge into adaptation solutions as well as building supportive social infrastructure to better support the anxieties and struggles faced by a community. Forums such as these not only bring the people's perspective to the forefront but also provide a supportive platform in which these stories, impacts, and experiences people may face during this process. These discussions in listening to the community's experiences often highlight specific vulnerabilities that we, as risk management experts, may miss out on.
If there is any takeaway from this article is that the community is a key tenant in climate change preparedness, especially as highlighted in the Hazard Risk Management (HRM) approach. This process advocates for a more holistic approach, as requested in this article, rather than a linear step by step process. A more linear, step by step process is unfortunately not replicable in communities as each community faces different hazards and are impacted differently based on vulnerabilities specific to the community. The first step in the HRM approach is to build support, form partnerships and involve a wide stakeholder community. This step is quite outreach heavy and this is because it is important to assess the level of support within the community for planning initiatives related to adaptation, risk and hazard management. In subsequent steps, there is also a focus in understanding the risks a community may face through the people who live in the community. This better informs and prioritize risk and also informs in defining community development goals as well as the long-term vision for the community as it relates to mitigating hazards.
Reference Getting ready for climate change is about people, not spreadsheets. Let's use our imaginations