Local knowledge and practice in disaster relief: A worldwide cross-cultural comparison of coping mechanisms

Abstract

There is a growing interest and urgency in understanding and incorporating local knowledge and strategies into sustainable climate change adaptation. This is particularly important because as populations age and new technologies come on the scene, much local knowledge is lost to newer generations. For this reason, we have systematically examined 90 societies from the ethnographic record to explore and document the strategies that people in the past have implemented in response to serious natural hazards. Our review reveals a rich diversity of coping mechanisms and contingency plans used by societies around the world in response to different hazards, particularly floods and droughts. We collect, classify, and compare different types of coping mechanisms, focusing on four major types: technological, subsistence, economic and religious. We find that most societies employ multiple types of coping mechanisms, although our data suggest that technological coping mechanisms are the most common coping mechanisms in response to fast-onset hazards, whereas religious coping mechanisms are the most common mechanism used in response to slow-onset hazards. We also find that religious and nonreligious coping strategies are not antithetical to each other. In fact, an increased number of religious coping mechanisms is associated with an increased number of “practical”, nonreligious coping mechanisms.