Riskscapes: a framework for risk assessments in settler colonial contexts

Keywords: Riskscape, Risk assessment, Values, Vulnerability, Settler colonialism
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Risk assessment is a critical area of knowledge production that frames global change adaptation practices. The identification and comparison of values at risk – entities, attributes and ideas that are important to communities – makes a population’s ability to resist or adapt to hazards legible. In settler colonial contexts, vulnerability depends on the distinct relationality to the land of Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and historicized power relations based on resource accumulation. While most risk assessments ignore or oversimplify cultural heterogeneity and settler colonialism using generalizable value concepts, those using context-dependent value concepts hardly incorporate different social groups living on the same land within a common framework. A holistic assessment approach is proposed to assess the vulnerability of different social groups in a non-hierarchical manner based on the concept of riskscapes. This framework assumes that each social position carries a particular set of representations and practices that reflects in landscape values shaped by hazards. We propose that risk assessments should define riskscapes to elicit values for mainstream social positions of an area and translate them in a joint geospatial interface to compare the values by highlighting convergent and competing interests. Using as example the boreal region of northwestern Quebec, Canada, we will discuss how this method put forward the politicized nature of valuation and give Indigenous relationalities access to legitimacy in decision-making bodies.