Reframing Environment in Interdisciplinary Disaster Research: A Decolonial Approach to Studying Hazard and Risk in Nepal

Keywords: Disaster, decolonial approaches, Local Knowledges, hazard, risk, Nepal
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

How environment is interpreted in interdisciplinary disaster research shapes approaches to studying hazard and risk. Yet the fundamental basis of disaster research knowledge production–an understanding of environments, environmental relationships, and processes of change–is under examined within critical disaster studies. Decolonizing approaches inspire critical examination of concepts framing research, such as concepts of “environment” or “hazard” and “risk”. However, we acknowledge that decolonial and anti-racist interdisciplinary research projects face a double challenge as they seek to translate knowledge across multiple disciplines in the humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences and centre forms of Indigenous and Local knowledge that emerge from different foundations than the scientific paradigm. Reflecting on our experience in a transnational interdisciplinary research project about cascading hazards and risk in the Nepal Himalaya, we argue that questioning the meaning of environment in specific research contexts provides an opening for conducting more inclusive disasters research in line with the ontological and political promise of decolonial research praxis. In this paper, we present how our team has worked to centre Indigenous and Local Knowledges of environment as the medium for understanding susceptibilities to landslides and how that choice has impacted the kind of interdisciplinary research we carry out in our team.