Natural hazard and climate change risk community engagement: A framework to aid engagement design. Lets Talk About Risk

Let’s Talk About Risk Team (Brown, C., Horn, C., Horsfall, S., Kilvington, M). 2023.

Funded project # 3496

About this framework

Increasingly, there is both a community desire and a regulatory need for communities and agencies to come together to talk about natural hazard and climate change risk. The complex and dynamic hazards we face stretch the resources our communities have. Now, more than ever, it is important that agencies work alongside communities to build our collective understanding of the hazards we face, enhance the capacity and preparedness of communities to cope with these events, and enable them to prioritise actions to manage these.

Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in community engagement on natural hazard and climate change risk. Some of the conversations, particularly where communities are facing or have already sustained significant losses, have proven to be highly emotive and adversarial. In other contexts, engagement is stalled because of uncertainties in the decision-making process. However, there have also been successful experiences where both communities and agencies have shared information and utilised feedback to plan the next steps. While there is substantial literature and guidance on community engagement in general, there is very little advice for practitioners dealing with conversations about natural hazard or climate change risk.

The original project final report can be accessed via the following link Lets Talk About Risk

 

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