Landslide exposure awareness: a community-based approach towards the engagement of children

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to draw attention to the need for rising landslide disaster risk awareness directed to children at the local level, particularly in peri-urban mountain areas of Mexico, where high vulnerability conditions and the lowest levels of information and attention are usually found. An attempt to engage children in the co-production of basic disaster risk knowledge associated with landslide exposure founded on a community-based mapping approach was documented for the neighbourhoods of Ayotzingo and Las Moraledas, localities built as post-disaster resettlements, resulting from the disaster of October 1999 associated with rainfall-induced landslides, in the municipality of Teziutlan, Puebla, in Mexico. The performed community-based mapping endeavour is part of the activities carried out within the framework of the ICL-IPL Project “Landslide disaster risk communication in mountain areas.” This approach indicated that analytical capabilities of community-based strategies could be used not only to contribute to the elaboration of hazard maps, but also to highlight the spatial complexity of social and environmental issues that produce and influence landslide disaster risk at the local level. Most importantly, community-based mapping workshops were useful to emphasise the importance of children’s education and participation in disaster risk reduction. In this paper, it is argued that in addition to using maps as quantitative and qualitative tools for depicting the different ingredients and interactions of historical and contemporary processes leading to the social construction of disaster risk, they are a popular and simplified view of the own space of peoples at risk that can be transformed to personal and communal awareness as an initial stage into the understanding of disaster risk and the necessity to transcend disaster response by supporting scientific evidence-based integrated disaster risk management (IDRiM). It was possible to conclude that community-based landslide mapping should be regarded as a cornerstone for landslide disaster risk awareness, favouring the co-production of knowledge by taking into account local contexts. Above and beyond all, it is considered that the sustain participation of children in DRR should be highly valued as a significant means to contribute to the challenge of curbing disaster losses and reducing disaster risk. Furthermore, it should be emphasised that the use of community-based approaches directed to children is obligated for educating the new generations due to the fact that the children of today will be the decision makers and responsible for the disaster risk governance of tomorrow.