Indigenous Volcanology Partnership (IVP)

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reports that 476 million people in more than 90 countries identify as Indigenous and ~20% of the Earth is covered by Indigenous territories. Globally, Indigenous peoples live at risk from natural hazards (e.g., volcanic eruptions, landslides, earthquakes). In the case of volcanoes, the focus of this work, all of the ~450 active volcanoes located in Canada, New Zealand, South America, and the USA are located within Indigenous territories and pose a risk to 10s of millions of people. However, despite both the potentially lethal nature of volcanic eruptions and the wealth of information preserved by Indigenous peoples, few attempts have been made to respectfully braid this Indigenous Knowledge with science during the modelling of volcanic processes and the forecasting of their associated hazard footprint. Thus, any associated hazard products and mitigation strategies are inherently limited. Currently no international partnerships or frameworks exist to co-create knowledge and hazard products that braid both Indigenous Knowledge and volcanology. This new partnership of global experts and Indigenous communities will address this gap. This ‘seedcorn’ project will assemble an international team with expertise not available in the UK. All team members are experts in, and involved with, civil defence, hazard mitigation and volcano monitoring. All live near an active volcano and have a direct, well established, and meaningful connection with local Indigenous communities, and, in some cases, are Indigenous themselves. Throughout the course of this grant, the partnership proposes to achieve three aims: (1) Form a ‘direct line of communication’ between volcanologists, Indigenous scholars, and Indigenous communities to effectively braid the ‘missing knowledge’ into the next generation of state-of-the-art numerical volcanic hazard models. This will form the basis of a long-term, self-sustaining ‘Indigenous Volcanology Partnership’ that encompasses academic institutions, government stakeholders, and local community groups. (2) Quantify the global overlap between Indigenous peoples and volcanoes and identify knowledge currently ‘missing’ or ‘overlooked’ when constructing volcanic hazard products that affect Indigenous territories. Highlighting this need/gap will support the case of future national and international grant applications by the partnership. (3) Determine successful methods to co-produce (volcanic) hazard products such that numerical model results can be effectively utilised by communities at risk. This will form proof-of-concept data for future grant applications by the partnership. These aims will be met through a series of meetings and workshops involving all team members wherein a database will be created that quantifies the global spatial overlap between volcanic hazards and Indigenous peoples, illustrating how information can be shared for mutual benefit whilst improving physical models of volcanic processes and their hazards. We will also engage in-person with four different Indigenous communities from the USA, New Zealand, Canada, and Argentina, to co-create and co-produce a volcanic hazard product. The final outcome will be a novel long-lasting partnership that is equipped to tackle timely and interdisciplinary research questions surrounding volcanic hazards, eruption processes, and disaster risk reduction. Subsequent research led by this team will, for example, identify how Indigenous Knowledge can be woven into volcanic hazard models to improve forecast accuracy, and uncover the most suitable products to communicate volcanic hazard and risk. Ultimately this will minimise the human and economic cost of volcanic eruptions around the world and is an outcome only achievable through a complimentary, global partnership.