Snakes and Folk Tales Meet Science in Disaster Warning

"Indigenous knowledge and science often seem poles apart, but meshing them can curb disaster risk..."

This article explores the integration of indigenous knowledge and conventional science, looking at strategies that can be used to engage members of the public to communicate about, and prepare for, natural disasters. The title of the article references a poem about an earthquake that killed thousands of people in Nepal and India in 1934. Nepali folk poet Lok Nath Pokharel described the conspicuous and widespread death of snakes, despite the earthquake occurring in the winter when snakes usually hibernate. Four decades later, people living in and around the city of Haicheng, in northeast China, noticed an unseasonable increase in the number of snakes. Three months later, an earthquake struck. To cite another example, several indigenous communities in Indonesia and Thailand, as well as India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, survived the December 26 2004 earthquake off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which triggered the tsunami that killed around 230,000 people. According to this article, no official tsunami warning system was in place to prepare (some of the) countries for the disaster. However, folk tales they had listened to all their lives alerted them to the dangers of shaking ground and the eerily retreating sea.

Quoted here is Jiba Raj Pokharel, professor of engineering and director of the Centre for Disaster Studies, Nepal, who draws many of his ideas for early warning systems from local knowledge, including snake alerts. "But it's not just a matter of taking local knowledge and inserting it into scientific preparedness plans." Scientific knowledge may conflict with local understanding of disasters and thus be rejected by communities. For example, before an eruption of the Mount Merapi volcano in Indonesia, official evacuation orders based on detailed scientific monitoring clashed with the advice of the volcano's spiritual gatekeeper.

Although challenging, as described here, integrating indigenous knowledge with modern science might be key to enabling scientists to make the communication of forecasts more accessible to local communities. Amongst the examples cited is that of Practical Action's work in southern Nepal's Chitwan District, an area affected by flash floods from smaller rivers. The organisation used local communication methods to improve access to scientific warnings. Besides the conventional sirens, local messengers (katuwals) have been trained to spread information about forthcoming floods, based on rainfall levels in gauges installed by Practical Action. Similarly, the Kenyan branch of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development's Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), together with the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) and several other partners, has tried integrating local knowledge into climate models with the aim of making seasonal forecasts understandable to farmers. For 6 seasons, the KMD worked with professional weather forecasters from the Nganyi community of western Kenya. The Nganyi traditionally keep a sharp eye on tree and animal behaviour, as well as wind changes. According to a person involved in the project, the forecast that combines conventional science and local knowledge has produced finer details that are more relevant to local communities, with more specific dates for the onset of rains, the likely length of a season, and indications of where and when it would rain.

The article stresses that trust between scientists and local communities is important and can be developed through close engagement. The biggest challenge is validating knowledge - on both sides. Shane Cronin, professor and director of Volcanic Risk Solutions, a research centre at Massey University in New Zealand, offers an illustration from his work with communities on Ambae, an island containing an active volcano in the Pacific country of Vanuatu. Cronin describes a misunderstanding between locals and scientists. In response, he initiated a dialogue in the local Bislama language, through a series of workshops held in two communities. Participants created village histories, volcanic hazard maps, and disaster response timelines that incorporated scientific information with cultural beliefs. Among other exercises, they matched local eruption timelines to exact years based on radiocarbon dating. The interactions allowed for "people to see that scientists weren't always going to be individuals they disagreed with, and in fact, that they could learn some things from the scientists, as well as them teaching scientists other things".

Given that many regions face common risks - drought, flooding, and hurricanes, for example - it is suggested that countries develop shared policies or frameworks for how to combine the two knowledge bases in practice.