“Listening to the Sounds of the Water”: Bringing Together Local Knowledge and Biophysical Data to Understand Climate-Related Hazard Dynamics

Abstract

Integrating local knowledge and scientific information can aid in co-developing locally relevant approaches for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Communities along the Mekong River have adapted to variability in temperature, rainfall, and flooding patterns over time. Rapid environmental change in the Mekong Basin presents a new set of challenges related to drought, altered seasonal rainfall, more frequent high-flow flood events, and water withdrawals for hydropower and irrigation. We present a multi-method approach to understand how local knowledge of the spatial and temporal patterns of floods, droughts, and rainfall can be integrated with scientific information along a flood-prone section of the lower Mekong River in Kratie Province, Cambodia. Participatory hazard mapping of community members’ knowledge of the movement of floodwaters through the landscape enabled interpretation of flood extent mapping using Synthetic Aperture Radar images from the Sentinel-1A satellite. Seasonal calendars of weather patterns and livelihood activities, together with local indicators of flooding, rainfall, and drought were compared with trends in 35 years of rainfall data, and highlighted “pressure points” at the beginning and end of the rainy season where agriculture may be particularly impacted by climate change. We discuss potential applications of our findings for adaptation and hazard planning.

Public health implications of multiple disaster exposures

“…Five articles focused on strategies for coping with multiple disasters at the household and community level. 81,[140][141][142][143] Bacon and colleagues 140 reviewed cumulative disasters in Nicaragua (coffee leaf rust from 2011 to present, drought in 2009, and Hurricane Mitch in 1998) and found a correlation between the coping responses that households used in past events and their continued use in subsequent disasters. Conversely, one study in Nebraska, USA documented various coping mechanisms for handling recurring severe drought in 2002-04 and 2012-14, and found that previous experience with the earlier drought resulted in different actions, including new water-conservation and land-use practices, in the later drought, with support from the government.…”

“…Ngwese and colleagues 81 studied communities affected by recurrent flooding and droughts in Ghana, and found that communities used traditional knowledge systems to prepare for disasters, while often viewing these practices as having low efficacy. In a study of climate-related hazards in Cambodia, Pauli and colleagues 142 found that combining traditional knowledge and biophysical data could lead to a better understanding of so-called pressure points, at which the effects of recurring flooding become most severe, and the authors advocate for the co-production of knowledge between scientists and local communities.…”

Exploring the integration of local and scientific knowledge in early warning systems for disaster risk reduction: a review

“…Some papers focused on multiple countries, which have been counted for each country. 12 articles had a global focused and could not be assigned to a country Adopting ethnographic methods, including focus group discussion and key informant interviews, offers an opportunity to unveil local knowledge that can improve policies in reducing disaster risk (Cronin et al 2004;Glaser et al 2008;Kelman et al 2012;Tiepolo and Braccio 2017;Ebhuoma 2020;Klonner et al 2021;Pauli et al 2021). These methods use past experiences of locals to discover facts, relationships, and new 'truths' surrounding vulnerability to hazards (Mercer and Kelman 2009).…”