Adaptations to Repetitive Flooding: Understanding Cross-Cultural and Legal Possibilities for Long-Term Solutions to Flooding Disaster
This is a winter snowstorm. All the water that’s there on the ocean, is supposed to be frozen, but it’s not and you have a big storm coming. This is beautiful, but it is also dangerous. This was in October – right at the beginning of the storm season; if the ocean is frozen, then the waves can’t cut into the permafrost and cause erosion and flooding. If the water is not frozen, then it is dangerous.
@ 2000-2021 Dennis Davis. All Rights Reserved
Adaptations to Repetitive Flooding is an NSF sponsored grant (award # 1921045) dedicated to understanding the legal and policy opportunities and constraints to adaptation under conditions of repetitive flooding. We hypothesize that ethnocentric assumptions within the law limits the set of possibilities for adaptation that may occur under different sets of cultural assumptions, such as the values and adaptive understandings that are part of Inupiat knowledge in the Bering Strait region. Our team is dedicated to the emancipatory idea of nihil de nobis, sine nobis, nothing about us without us; and has formed a multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, and multi-regional team to ask questions, develop methodologies, and talk through problems, data, solutions, and challenges. These are experimental tasks and deep-rooted values that may be challenging to adhere to in a research setting. We do not take the possible limitations lightly. We are also dedicated to joyful engagement and a spirit of reciprocity and responsibility.
