The role of context and culture in influencing vulnerability and resilience to environmental risk

Contextual factors – ideologies, cultural beliefs, social norms, economic and power systems, institutional cultures, governance structures and processes, and the framing of problems and solutions – influence vulnerability and resilience to environmental risk. But how these complex contextual and cultural factors and processes combine in different places and cultural settings remains poorly understood. Furthermore, little is known about how culture influences risk responses and outcomes. Better approaches to integrate culture into disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation research, policy, and practice, are needed.

This project creates a learning alliance of knowledge partners to increase collaboration and multi-disciplinarity in the social sciences. It builds research capacity, generates new knowledge, showcases innovation in theory, methodologies and methods, influences policy, and spurs new ways of thinking and doing. Seed funding is used to conduct literature reviews, organize two workshops, identify scholars, policy stakeholders, and case studies, and produce a position paper and a full project proposal.