Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience in Education: A Periurban Perspective

Abstract

This paper describes the challenges and issues involved in mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in education from a periurban perspective. Periurban spaces, that combine features of both rural and urban environments, are rapidly growing in importance and geographical spread as urbanisation advances in the global south. These spaces face threats both from urbanisation and climate change. Yet most studies on vulnerability, adaptation and resilience focus on rural or urban spaces and contexts. This chapter looks at the unique nature of vulnerability and resilience in periurban contexts and highlights an approach that will be needed to mainstream disaster risk reduction in higher education curricula. It highlights key concepts and issues that need to be part of such curricula as well as important aspects of approach and pedagogy. The paper draws attention to the factors that shape vulnerability in periurban contexts as distinct from rural or urban contexts. Social capital is often eroded, gender relations are transformed because of rural–urban migration or land use change, and land acquisition processes give rise to several other changes, such as insecure tenure and access to water, that shape the vulnerability of periurban communities. In education programmes for urban planning or rural development practitioners, attention needs to be paid to building a perspective on periurban vulnerability and disaster risk reduction. This requires building an understanding of the concept of periurban and the drivers and features of periurbanisation processes. The weakening of social capital, transformation of gender relations and the fluidity of land tenure and changing water security are important subjects to be engaged with. Finally, an appropriate pedagogy would rely on case studies on vulnerability and disaster risk reduction in the periurban spaces of the global south.