Planning for disaster: predictability and disruption in the Anthropocene
Thorgeir Kolshus, Oslo and Akershus University College of the Applied Sciences/ University of Oslo
One of many effects of climate change has been an increase in particularly severe natural calamities, which affects infrastructure, productive cycles, relations of exchange, perceptions of the future, residency patterns and a wide range of other crucial institutions and social modalities. Most climate model prognoses suggest that this development will continue unabated. How does this certainty of upcoming natural disasters have an impact on people’s priorities; what are the consequences for agricultural planning when severe droughts, heavy floods or class 5 cyclones are recurring phenomena; how does this influence decisions regarding whether to invest in the uncertain outcome of a child’s education; what effect do regularly occurring catastrophes have on migration choices, including the possibilities of returning to one’s previous home? These are only a few of the empirical questions that can be raised in order to explicate how we read the future through the prism of the present and how we act according to these projections.
This session invites papers that address how the impact of natural disasters influence the prospects of success for projects that involve more long-term investments of physical work and innovative energy, including those that are required as part the shift to more sustainable livelihoods. In order to facilitate comparative dialogues between the papers, the presentations are encouraged to engage questions of vulnerability, cultural resilience, ingenuity demand/ingenuity gap, and/or the interface between local and translocal governance.
Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words to Thorgeir Kolshus (thorgeir.kolshus@hioa.no) by 06 December 2017.
POLLEN 