4 additional reading

Framework for indigenous and scientific information integration.Indigenous populations have a history of adapting to slow paced change in order to survive, however recent global trends and accelerated change has meant that reported disasters happening to remote communities have rapidly increased since 1950.Often indigenous knowledge is pushed aside due to the tenancy of scientific knowledge to ignore and disregard all other.Key to disaster risk reduction is that local populations are assisted rather than taught, if they reach solutions themselves with minor guidance from 'experts' they are more likely to act on solutions and reduce their vulnerability.

The Framework desired outcomes: reduced vulnerability to hazards. increased collaboration among stakeholders. DDR planning. The framework is essentially a partnership between researchers, communities and other stakeholders e.g. NGO's, charities etc.

Steps in the Framework: Community engagement: get the community opinions of their vulnerabilities and how they are perceived and prioritized. The Papa New Guinea meeting were held with community elders, then the council all in hopes of conforming to local tradition and adding trust and legitimacy to the process gaining local support. Identify vulnerability factors: Extrinsic and Intrinsic (resulting from extrinsic) factors need to be identified. support and assist a community in knowing their vulnerabilities adding to DRR. Once the factors have been identified a pair-wise comparison was undertaken to rank factors in order of their contribution to the vulnerability of the population. Identify useful scientific & indigenous strategy: its a process of assessing the knowledge and solutions available and reaching a consensus of suitable technique in order to reduce disaster risk. The population must discover on its own essentially, researchers and other stakeholders must only guide them. Finalize an integrated strategy: the community develops a new strategy, constant revision and evaluation is necessary to deal with the changing nature of hazards and continued reduction of vulnerability. 

In PNG:Factors were identified to assess the effectiveness of past,present and future strategies: sustainability, cost, equitability and stability. Most of the success of the framework lies in the low level community engagement.

What is indigenous knowledge? Imbedded in a particular community. Contextually bound. Non belief in individualist values. no subject/object dichotomy. requires commitment to local context.

What is indigenous knowledge?

Classification of scientific and indigenous knowledge does not work because there is a level of heterogeneity in the elements of the knowledge.Scientific knowledge is generally separable from common sense, whereas indigenous knowledge is essentially common sense.

Mercer et al. 2009

Agrawal 1995