Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/P01609X/1
Why we Disagree about Resilience: epistemology, methodology and policy space for integrated disaster risk management
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor M Pelling, King's College London, Geography
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor BD Malamud, Durham University, Geography
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr JDA Millington, King's College London, Geography
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr R Sitas, University of Cape Town, African Centre for Cities
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor G Ziervogel, University of Cape Town, Faculty of Science
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor K Hyams, University of Warwick, Politics and International Studies
- Grant held at:
- King's College London, Geography
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Earth
- Freshwater
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Regional & Extreme Weather
- Geography and Development
- Political Philosophy
- Analytical Science
- Community Art inc A & H
- Abstract:
- Resilience programming often draws on technical science to highlight its benefits, yet little systematic work has studied the role of science in shaping resilience policy trajectories. Improved knowledge of how science is used by different actors and interests in resilience policy processes is important of resilience is to help build inclusive, transparent and just development. This calls for a better understanding of why specific actors prefer certain kinds of scientific knowledge when making the case for resilience, how languages of science alienate or support specific actor groups, and if the worldviews projected through individual science traditions preference particular kinds of policy response and outcomes from calls for resilience. Thinking of science as integral to policy processes and arguments moves analysis past linear explanations of risk communication and places science within governance systems. This allows much more fine grained explanation of where and why science is used and by whom, and opens questions about the duties of scientists as actors in governance systems - not as neutral experts acting from the outside of governance processes. Opening up a systematic research agenda on the role of science in resilience can draw upon mature work of this kind on risk governance. Opening up to the justice implications of specific science-policy relationships is made timely by the heightened role given to science by the UN Sendai Framework for Action 2015-30. Here science is called upon to help innovate, monitor and evaluation but also to convene of risk management policy. The convening role of science is little explored within disaster risk management and work is needed that can help policy actors learn how to use science to provide shared spaces for common dialogue around contentious topics like resilience and to avoid resilience becoming a tool for policy domination and capture. Opening a research agenda on the role of science in governance for risk and resilience requires a transdisciplinary approach - one that combines interdisciplinarty with stakeholder coproduction. The proposed project will combine political philosophy and critical social science to ask questions of duty and power to science production processes, review participatory methods used to describe resilience and bring together experience from hazards mapping and visualisation and arts and performance methods to provide multiple methods that can surface different interpretations of resilience. Performance based methods will allow for interpretive and emotional aspects of resilience to be presented and contrast with geographical information systems using spatially defined hazard and social attributes for specific places. The framing of questions, methods and analysis will also incorporate stakeholders from each of the three pilot study sites: Cape Town (Philippi), Manila (Tay Tay) and Nairobi (Kibera). These were chosen because of existing research partnerships and ongoing resilience policy and programming that can be augmented by the proposed work. Nairobi and Cape Town are also members of the Rockerfeller 100 Cities programme. Research impact planning has commenced in the pre-proposal planning stage and will be developed from the start of the project through collaboration with city practitioners and policy makers. City partners have been enthusiastic to collaborate in a project that can help surface competing visions of resilience and how resilience can be used to secure desirable futures from the perspectives of competing urban stakeholders. Partners are keen to compare experiences and lessons learnt form the proposed work and take these forward. The project will produce a single policy brief for each city and two academic papers. It will also convene workshops in London and Warwick to bring practitioners and scientists together to collaborate in research design and in the verification and fine tuning dissemination of results.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/P01609X/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Directed - International
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- GCRF-Resilience
This grant award has a total value of £169,867
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Exception - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £9,807 | £15,122 | £33,110 | £19,411 | £5,545 | £36,209 | £50,663 |
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