The essential contribution of indigenous knowledge to understanding natural hazards and disaster risk: historical evidence from the Rwenzori (Uganda)

The integration of indigenous knowledge into understanding disasters from natural hazards is hitherto hampered by the limited conceptualization of the process that shapes indigenous knowing. This study proposed a framework, structuring the processes that shape indigenous knowledge on disaster risk. Bearing that framework in mind, the evolution of disaster risk as understood by indigenous people was investigated based on the case floods in the Rwenzori. Data are collected using participatory ethnographic methods and analyzed through an inductive-analytical approach. Findings indicated indigenous knowledge framed along lived experiences, fostered by open knowledge production in the cultural institutions. This enabled rationalization of successive floods, over time, favoring a conceptualization of the context-specific processes through which flooding turns into disaster. This indigenous conceptualization not only exposes blind spots in the scientific evidence on context-specific processes of floods; it further illustrated how, through history, flood risk is a primary consequence of pressures that are sociopolitical and capitalist in nature. These pressures tend to undermine indigenous knowledge of flood risk specificities, favor watershed degradation, aggravate exposure, and hamper community-based investments that would enhance resilience. This exposition of distal pressures neglected by scientists highlights the indispensable role of indigenous perspectives in understanding context-specific disaster risk. Graphic abstract Indigenous knowledge construction framework and its influencing factors in practice.