Research summary
Climate change is causing more extreme weather events, infrastructure failure and cascading risks to food and livelihood security.
When it comes to managing the risks of environmental harm, we have tended to focus on engineering, reactive, command and control solutions at the expense of approaches aimed at improving community solutions and resiliency. Dr. Ranjan Datta, Canada Research Chair in Community Disaster Research, is trying to fill this gap, identifying measures that will promote understanding, management and environmental harm risk reduction in Indigenous communities. Using community-based research approaches, he and his team are engaging policy experts and local community members to foster a culture of resilience, local decision-making and advocacy that will lead to social action.