Ilan Kelman

Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health

The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change has been formed to map out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, in order to ensure the highest attainable stand ...

Framework for integrating indigenous and scientific knowledge for disaster risk reduction

A growing awareness of the value of indigenous knowledge has prompted calls for its use within disaster risk reduction. The use of indigenous knowledge alongside scientific knowledge is increasingly advocated but there is as yet no clearly developed framework demonstrating how the two may be integrated to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards. This paper presents such a framework, using a participatory approach in which relevant indigenous and scientific knowledge may be integrated to reduce a communitys vulnerability to environmental hazards. Focusing on small island developing states it presents an analysis of the need for such a framework alongside the difficulties of incorporating indigenous knowledge. This is followed by an explanation of the various processes within the framework, drawing on research completed in Papua New Guinea. This framework is an important first step in identifying how indigenous and scientific knowledge may be integrated to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards.

The potential for combining indigenous and western knowledge in reducing vulnerability to environmental hazards in small island developing states

Abstract The benefits of indigenous knowledge within disaster risk reduction are gradually being acknowledged and identified. However, despite this acknowledgement there continues to be a gap in reaching the right people with the correct strategies for disaster risk reduction. This paper identifies the need for a specific framework identifying how indigenous and western knowledge may be combined to mitigate against the intrinsic effects of environmental processes and therefore reduce the vulnerability of rural indigenous communities in small island developing states (SIDS) to environmental hazards. This involves a review of the impacts of environmental processes and their intrinsic effects upon rural indigenous communities in SIDS and how indigenous knowledge has contributed to their coping capacity. The paper concludes that the vulnerability of indigenous communities in SIDS to environmental hazards can only be addressed through the utilisation of both indigenous and Western knowledge in a culturally compatible and sustainable manner.

Climate Change’s Role in Disaster Risk Reduction’s Future: Beyond Vulnerability and Resilience

A seminal policy year for development and sustainability occurs in 2015 due to three parallel processes that seek long-term agreements for climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, and disaster risk reduction. Little reason exists to separate them, since all three examine and aim to deal with many similar processes, including vulnerability and resilience. This article uses vulnerability and resilience to explore the intersections and overlaps amongst climate change, disaster risk reduction, and sustainability. Critiquing concepts such as “return to normal” and “double exposure” demonstrate how separating climate change from wider contexts is counterproductive. Climate change is one contributor to disaster risk and one creeping environmental change amongst many, and not necessarily the most prominent or fundamental contributor. Yet climate change has become politically important, yielding an opportunity to highlight and tackle the deep-rooted vulnerability processes that cause “multiple exposure” to multiple threats. To enhance resilience processes that deal with the challenges, a prudent place for climate change would be as a subset within disaster risk reduction. Climate change adaptation therefore becomes one of many processes within disaster risk reduction. In turn, disaster risk reduction should sit within development and sustainability to avoid isolation from topics wider than disaster risk. Integration of the topics in this way moves beyond expressions of vulnerability and resilience towards a vision of disaster risk reduction’s future that ends tribalism and separation in order to work together to achieve common goals for humanity.

Integrating indigenous and scientific knowledge bases for disaster risk reduction in papua new guinea

Abstract. In investigating ways to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards it is essential to recognize the interaction between indigenous and scientific knowledge bases. Indigenous and scientific knowledge bases are dynamic entities. Using a Process Framework to identify how indigenous and scientific knowledge bases may be integrated, three communities impacted upon by environmental hazards in Papua New Guinea, a Small Island Developing State, have established how their vulnerability to environmental hazards may be reduced. This article explores the application of the framework within the communities of Kumalu, Singas and Baliau, and how this could impact upon the future management of environmental hazards within indigenous communities in Small Island Developing States.

The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health

The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement, 1 and th ...

Framing volcanic risk communication within disaster risk reduction: finding ways for the social and physical sciences to work together

Abstract Sixteen years have passed since the last global volcanic event and more than 25 since a volcanic catastrophe that killed tens of thousands. In this time, volcanology has seen major advances in understanding, modelling and predicting volcanic hazards and, recently, an interest in techniques for reducing and mitigating volcanic risk. This paper provides a synthesis of literature relating to this last aspect, specifically the communication of volcanic risk, with a view to highlighting areas of future research into encouraging risk-reducing behaviour. Evidence suggests that the current ‘multidisciplinary’ approach within physical science needs a broader scope to include sociological knowledge and techniques. Key areas where this approach might be applied are: (1) the understanding of the incentives that make governments and communities act to reduce volcanic risk; (2) improving the communication of volcanic uncertainties in volcanic emergency management and long-term planning and development. To be successful, volcanic risk reduction programmes will need to be placed within the context of other other risk-related phenomena (e.g. other natural hazards, climate change) and aim to develop an all-risks reduction culture. We suggest that the greatest potential for achieving these two aims comes from deliberative inclusive processes and geographic information systems.

Climate Change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

This article reviews climate change within the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR), analyzing how climate change is mentioned in the framework’s text and the potential implications for dealing with climate change within the context of disaster risk reduction. Three main categories are examined. First, climate change affecting disaster risk and disasters, demonstrating too much emphasis on the single hazard driver and diminisher of climate change. Second, cross-sectoral approaches, for which the SFDRR treads carefully, thereby unfortunately entrenching artificial differences and divisions, although appropriately offering plenty of support to other sectors from disaster risk reduction. Third, implementation, for which climate change plays a suitable role without being overbearing, but for which other hazard influencers should have been treated similarly. Overall, the mentions of climate change within the SFDRR put too much emphasis on the hazard part of disaster risk. Instead, within the context of the three global sustainable development processes that seek agreements in 2015, climate change could have been used to further support an all-vulnerabilities and all-resiliences approach. That could be achieved by placing climate change adaptation as one subset within disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation as one subset within sustainable development.

Learning from the history of disaster vulnerability and resilience research and practice for climate change

Humanity has long sought to explain and understand why environmental processes and phenomena contribute to and interfere with development processes, frequently through the terms and concepts of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’. Many proven ideas and approaches from development and disaster risk reduction literature are not fully considered by contemporary climate change work. This chapter describes the importance of older vulnerability and resilience research for contemporary investigations involving climate change, suggesting ways forward without disciplinary blinkers. Vulnerability and resilience as processes are explored alongside critiques of the post-disaster ‘return to normal’ paradigm. The importance of learning from already existing literature and experience is demonstrated for ensuring that complete vulnerability and resilience processes are accounted for by placing climate change within other contemporary development concerns.

How climate change is considered in sustainable tourism policies: a case of the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Mallorca.

Mediterranean island case studies of Calvia, Mallorca, and Malta are used to examine how sustainable tourism policies do, do not, and should factor in climate change in order to reduce the vulnerabilities of the tourism sector to climate change. Data were collected from key actors responsible for policy implementation as well as tourism policy and planning documents from Malta�s and Calvia�s tourism industries. Tourism in both sites has signifi cant vulnerabilities to climate change, but climate change was rarely stated as being an important tourism issue. That was the case even when policies include measures that contribute to climate change adaptation, although those policies were implemented for reasons other than climate change. Six policy suggestions are made for adapting to climate change in the case studies� tourism industries: Enacting effective control systems to ensure that policies are implemented and monitored; improving education and awareness on climate change and its potential impacts; placing sustainable tourism and climate change within broader policy frameworks; implementing economic incentives to encourage adjustment strategies; using accountable, fl exible, and participatory approaches for addressing climate change in sustainable tourism policies; and fi lling in policy gaps while further integrating policies. Placing climate change into wider contexts reveals that some aspects of tourism might not be sustainable for small islands. Climate change should therefore be one dimension among many topics within sustainable tourism policies. That approach would provide impetus and support for pursuing strategies that should also be implemented for reasons other than climate change.