Abstract
Risk assessment is a critical aspect of coping with environmental changes. The identification of values at risk — entities, attributes, and ideas that are important to a community — is a key component of a population's ability to resist or adapt to hazards. In colonial contexts, risk assessment must take into account the distinct relationality to the land of Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and the historicized power relations. Most risk assessment frameworks ignore or oversimplify the cultural heterogeneity of human–environment relationships by using generalized value concepts. The few context-dependent frameworks that have been proposed do not account for different sociocultural groups living on the same land. We propose a spatial-based risk assessment approach inspired by the concept of riskscape, acknowledging diverse perceptions of risk and landscape among different sociocultural groups. We present a risk assessment method eliciting values for different sociocultural groups in their specific contexts using separate valuation methods, and then aggregating them into a joint geospatial interface to highlight convergent and competing interests. Illustrated with the boreal region of northwestern Quebec (Canada), we discuss how the riskscape framework balances Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives in a non-hierarchical assessment of values at risk.
Introduction
Climate change, population growth, and increasing consumption of natural resources can all be sources of hazards, exposing communities to risks and disasters (IPCC 2023). In recent years, large wildfires, floods in alluvial plains and on ocean coasts, oil spills, civil wars, droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes increased in frequency worldwide (IPCC 2023). Facing increased sensitivity to hazards in a changing environmental context, policymakers need improved risk assessment tools to select between various adaptation measures (Birkmann 2013; Blaikie et al. 2014; Dauphiné and Provitolo 2013).
Risk assessment refers to practices aiming to evaluate how hazards — potential anthropogenic or biophysical disturbances — interact with vulnerable communities (Dauphiné and Provitolo 2013; Lacasse 2013). Vulnerability can in turn be assessed based on the degree of exposure and on the sensitivity to harm of values at risk — beneficial and desirable entities, attributes, qualities, or principles of importance to communities (O’Brien and Wolf 2010). The identification and characterization of values at risk reflecting human–environment relationships allow practitioners to assess and compare the ability to resist, overcome, or adapt to disturbances in different contexts.
Risk assessment typically ignores or simplifies the complexity of social–ecological systems, the cultural heterogeneity of inhabited environments, multidimensional power relations, and the evolving nature of risks (Cockburn et al. 2018; Fabinyi, Evans and Foale 2014; Stedman 2016). Indigenous peoples have a different relationship to the land from that of non-Indigenous populations (Asselin 2015; Daes 2001; Heyd 1995). Land use planning, including risk management, is central to colonial projects as a normative way to conceive space (Porter 2016). Hence, risk management has historically reinforced Indigenous peoples’ vulnerability to hazards by prioritizing resource extraction and capital accumulation over Indigenous livelihoods (Nunn 2018; Stanley 2020). Consequently, we postulate in this synthesis that the respective vulnerabilities of Indigenous and non-Indigenous values at risk are currently poorly taken into account in risk assessments conducted in colonial contexts.
We propose a risk assessment methodology that allows for the non-hierarchical inclusion of values at risk specific to Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in a given environment. To do this, we first reviewed the scientific literature to highlight the different ways in which risk assessment represents vulnerability to hazards. We searched the Scopus database in February 2023 using the keywords “value at risk,” “value,” “risk,” and “valuation” in French and English, singular and plural. The keywords “environmental,” “social,” and “cultural” were added to circumscribe the search field. Only publications in the fields of environmental and social sciences were selected. Of the more than 6,000 publications retrieved, the most cited and most recent texts were prioritized, along with syntheses, until information saturation was reached.
Based on our critical analysis of the literature, we developed a double typology — conceptual and methodological — of values at risk. We categorized the definitions of value according to their context dependence and abstractness (conceptual typology). We also categorized the methods used to measure and compare values according to the valuation process (methodological typology). Finally, we discuss the limitations of various valuation methods to adequately assess risk in colonial contexts. Methods using only universalistic definitions of values tend to ignore, homogenize, and oversimplify differentiating factors of vulnerability, while valuation methods using only context-based definitions of values complicate risk assessment in environments where different social groups cohabit.
To address the limitations of risk assessment methods in colonial contexts, we propose a framework to elicit and analyze values at risk from a critical geography perspective “to articulate anticolonial behaviors and techniques” (de Leeuw and Hunt 2018, 5). We based our framework on the concept of riskscape as developed by Detlef Müller-Mahn and colleagues from a political ecology perspective (Müller-Mahn and Everts 2013; Müller-Mahn, Everts and Stephan 2018). The riskscape approach posits a holistic conception of risk recognizing the plural, contextual, and evolving nature of risk within space. Based on this approach, we propose a risk assessment framework for colonial contexts, which consists of (1) identifying key Indigenous and non-Indigenous social groups, (2) selecting context-dependent valuation methods in collaboration with each group, and (3) identifying the values at risk that constitute each group's riskscape and transposing them into a geographic information system (GIS). This framework will not help practitioners elicit Indigenous or non-Indigenous values at risk to include them in risk assessments, but it will rather help them perform anticolonial risk assessments allowing for a plurality of worldviews and multiple ways of valuing. In so doing, this framework highlights otherwise invisible power relations and recognizes the legitimacy of Indigenous worldviews. We present a case study in the boreal region of northwestern Quebec, Canada to illustrate the applicability of our risk assessment framework and its relevance to researchers and land stewards.
Typologies of value at risk and valuation methods
Value concepts
The concept of value is used in variable ways in common and scientific language, making its use in risk assessments confusing. Each scientific discipline has its own understanding based on a specific theoretical tradition (Bracken and Oughton 2006; Kenter et al. 2019; Rawluk et al. 2019). A value generally refers to what is important to people and why, and the addition of at risk refers to its mobilization in a risk assessment or management process when there is potential harm (Rawluk et al. 2017). Previous syntheses have classified different approaches to defining value. A common classification distinguishes intrinsic values — desirable in and of themselves — from instrumental values — having direct or indirect usefulness for humanity — and more recently, from relational values — meaningful features of human–environment relationships (Arias-Arévalo et al. 2018; Chan et al. 2016; Himes et al. 2023; Jones et al. 2016; Pascual et al. 2017). Syntheses specific to the study of hazards and risks have instead organized the definitions of value along spectrums of abstraction (Rawluk et al. 2017; Williams, Ford and Rawluk 2018) and context dependence (Phoenix et al. 2013; Rawluk et al. 2019). Abstractness distinguishes between tangible values — localizable material entities — and intangible values — abstract concepts and principles. Context dependence distinguishes, on the one hand, “generalizable” values that have an existence independent of individual perceptions and a stable definition across situations from, on the other hand, “contextual” values dependent upon individual and collective perceptions and experiences that emerge from a social and environmental context. Contextual definitions focus more on the process by which values are elicited than on their ontology (Himes and Muraca 2018; Moon and Blackman 2014). These typologies are better at representing the interdisciplinary nature of risk assessments, where different understandings of value at risk cross the intrinsic-instrumental (-relational) divide when mobilized by a various array of practitioners.
Combining the typologies of Rawluk et al. (2017, 2019) and Williams, Ford and Rawluk (2018), we propose to categorize values (at risk) based on two classes of context dependence, namely, (1) generalizable and (2) contextual, and three classes of abstractness, namely, (1) intangible, (2) semi-tangible, and (3) tangible (Table 1). The semi-tangible class of abstractness covers values at risk that both mobilize abstract ideas, experiences, or principles and the physical environment within a single concept. This conceptual typology facilitates the elicitation of values at risk by using the appropriate valuation methods (see next section) since practitioners need to mobilize different concepts depending on their goals for each assessment. Whether they need to localize, measure, and compare generic objects in an area according to a known metric of worthiness to understand the replacement cost after an event or to assess the value of places along cultural and social lines to explore the uneven distribution of vulnerability among a population, practitioners will need to use the appropriate concept of value at risk.
Value at risk concepts according to classes of context dependence and abstractness.
Valuation methods
Raymond et al. (2014) distinguished two valuation paradigms based on different rationalities, elicitation methods, representativeness, and involvement of decision makers. The instrumental paradigm includes methods with a focus on rating and ranking values based on expert judgment or through public participation within a framework with pre-defined criteria. The values elicited with this approach are generalized to a social set (statistical sample) deemed to be representative of a social whole (population). The deliberative paradigm aims at making values emerge through communication, participation, social learning, and negotiation between people participating in a common project, putting forward their shared or divergent interests. This typology is related to the context dependence of the value concepts described above. Broadly, but not exclusively, generalizable values are elicited using instrumental methods, while contextual values are elicited using deliberative methods.
Tadaki, Sinner and Chan (2017) propose a typology of valuation methods according to four approaches: (1) value as a magnitude of preference for desired qualities; (2) value as a contribution of an action or an object to the achievement of a specific goal; (3) value as individual priorities; or (4) value as relations between people and nature. Valuation methods based on the magnitude of preference and individual priorities are related to generalizable and intangible definitions of the value concept. They often require expert judgment. When they involve public participation, it is only advisory and always supervised. Valuation methods based on contribution to a goal tend to focus on tangible values. They are also mobilized within a pre-defined framework. Valuation methods based on relations are related to contextual concepts. They view values as the product of a diverse network of relationships that communities have with the environment.
In Table 2, we listed different valuation methods by drawing on and combining the typologies of Raymond et al. (2014) and Tadaki, Sinner and Chan (2017). The first column of the table distinguishes three sources of value elicitation inspired by Raymond et al. (2014): (1) methods relying only on expert judgment; (2) those requiring a supervised public consultation; and (3) those where a deliberative exercise must be conducted. The second column classifies elicitation methods according to Tadaki, Sinner and Chan’s (2017) approaches to valuation: (1) value as a magnitude of preference; (2) value as a contribution to a goal; (3) value as individual priority; and (4) value as relation. Finally, the methods are classified as quantitative (monetary or non-monetary), qualitative, or mixed as they are used in practice. This methodological typology is well suited for risk management as it represents the field of possibilities within which practitioners can choose a valuation method and determine the necessary involvement of stakeholders according to the goals they are pursuing: to classify values by importance to know which is vulnerable to harm and where; to evaluate the capacity of an area to resist or adapt to hazards; to explore the effectiveness of land development practices on vulnerability; or to compare preferred compensation or restoration scenarios after a hazard using cost–benefit analysis.
Valuation methods for eliciting values at risk.
Risk assessments in colonial contexts
Contemporary colonial contexts where Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations cohabit present multiple forms over the world and are bounded by relationships of domination at different scales. While some are influenced by ideologies justifying domination over the Indigenous population to extract value from their labor, others are strongly influenced by hegemonic socio-spatial representations and practices aimed to “free up” the land for resource extraction to meet the needs of the dominant non-Indigenous society (Asselin 2011; Veracini 2011; Wolfe 2006). The ideologies and practices of domination and dispossession have led to the decline and the eviction of Indigenous peoples in whole or in part from their continuously occupied territories through epidemics, wars, forced or coerced relocation, allotment, expropriation, the extinguishment of their titles, and the destruction of their traditional social order (Daes 2001). The usurpation of land and labor as “resources” and the socio-ecological transformation of Indigenous peoples’ territories for capital accumulation are greatly responsible for a loss of multigenerational knowledge of the land, central to culture, identity, and adaptive capacity (Voggesser et al. 2014). These ongoing processes place Indigenous peoples in a situation of marginality, poverty, and subalternity (Bellier 2018) vis-à-vis the dominant society. Colonial power relations render Indigenous peoples vulnerable because of “resource dispossession, economic poverty, poor health, low levels of formal education, high unemployment, social and political marginalisation, remoteness from services, language and cross-cultural barriers, poor housing, and poor quality or absent public infrastructures” (Thomassin, Neale and Weir 2019, 169).
Indigenous peoples share a particular spiritual and material relationship with their homelands since pre-colonial times (United Nations 2009). This relationship is distinct from non-Indigenous societies in its profound social, cultural, economic, and political significance. Indigenous knowledge and identities are inseparable from the land and recognize society and nature as intertwined and interconnected. Indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems reflect this worldview as they are strongly context-dependent and holistic. They evolve over time through the accumulation of intergenerational experiences (Asselin 2015; Denzin, Lincoln and Smith 2008; McGregor 2013; Smith 2021; Tuck and McKenzie 2014; Wilson 2008).
Risk assessment is based on a particular understanding of values that differs according to the experience, beliefs, interests, social position, and access to resources of the individuals or groups that define values at risk (Bonaiuto et al. 2016). The valuation process generates criteria to determine if and when disturbance thresholds could be exceeded, beyond which consequences would become unacceptable or intolerable to individuals and communities. This decision-making process then allows selecting strategies to mitigate risk (Barton et al. 2022; Belina and Miggelbrink 2013).
The definition of values at risk is highly dependent on ethical norms; distribution of risks, consequences, and benefits; actual or inferred priorities of the population; and power relations between social groups (Martinez-Alier 2009; Raymond et al. 2014). Valuation methods are thus politicized by nature. Value elicitation approaches will thus represent or ignore the interests of different social groups or will engage those groups in a deliberation process (Barton et al. 2022). Those conducting risk assessment often fail to recognize their engagement within power relations in the long term and therefore struggle to recognize and move beyond the exclusion of Indigenous peoples and the underrepresentation of marginalized non-Indigenous groups. The recognition of historicized power relations is necessary to ensure that risk assessment does not ignore or reinforce the vulnerability to hazards of certain social groups, especially in an environment where groups with distinct relationships with the land cohabit. To date, the contribution of Indigenous-sensitive risk research has focused primarily on recognizing Indigenous peoples’ unique relationship to the land, their distinctive perceptions of risk, their environmental stewardship practices, and their experiences with disasters (Berkes and Davidson-Hunt 2006; Mercer et al. 2010; Newton, Paci and Ogden 2005). These contributions have not yet allowed the development of relevant cross-cultural risk assessment methods for environments where values specific to Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations are held.
Limits to valuation methods for eliciting values at risk
Valuation methods for eliciting, measuring, and comparing generalizable value concepts tend to oversimplify the complexity and diversity of human–environment relationships across contexts (Chan et al. 2011; Raymond et al. 2014). The use of generalizable values freezes a set of social relationships articulated in specific spatiotemporal contexts by presenting them as universal (Ioris 2012). This is particularly evident with the contingent valuation method, which reduces the complexity of a person's relationship with the material and social environment to its status as a consumer (Hausman 2012). A person could, however, make different choices about what they consider good for the community if inclined to think collectively as a citizen or policymaker during a deliberation (Geleta et al. 2018). Simplifying the diversity of meaning, use, and relationship with values ignores or reinforces the socioeconomic inequalities produced by practices based on commodity flows and capital accumulation (Ioris 2012). When non-use and contextual values are recognized, as in the early work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Díaz et al. 2015; Pascual et al. 2017), value is reduced to a logic in which universalistic values-as-commodities are opposed to “traditional” or “local” cultural values. Such a dualistic logic separating culture from nature may seem innocuous, but uneven power relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations have resulted in a hierarchization of values that privileges a particular form of humanity above others (Bakker and Bridge 2006; Descola 2005; Moore 2015).
Risk assessment methods need to be developed to address the diversity of relationships between communities and the environment beyond the utilitarian relationship (Kenter et al. 2019). Such methods could allow the consideration of non-hegemonic relationships to the land, such as Indigenous worldviews, in a common framework with dominant worldviews. Value concepts, such as lived values, sense of place, landscape value, or valued entity, are better able to acknowledge a diversity of relationships (Raymond et al. 2014; Tadaki, Sinner and Chan 2017; Tuck and McKenzie 2014). They consider material or immaterial reality as socially constructed and evolving. However, context-dependent methodologies often struggle to integrate the plurality of worldviews held by different social groups into common risk management adaptation plans (Ioris 2012). Context-dependent valuation methods, such as a survey to determine local lived values of a coastal community exposed to sea-level rise (Graham et al. 2014), are excellent at demonstrating the uniqueness and complexity of values among communities but struggle to assess how values are shared. Such methods used alone fragment a common environment into a multitude of particularities and fail to overcome the uneven relationships in which the valuation process takes place (Ioris 2013). The geographic space is often treated as a receptor of multiple practices and interests determined by different representations and relationships without including its evolving dimension or its embeddedness in human–environment relations (Ioris 2012). Moreover, the exercise of transferring content expressed in a local context — in an interview, in a diary, or through images — to scientific or decision-making contexts requires a form of translation (Tuck and McKenzie 2014). Such a reinterpretation taken out of context could result in a loss of meaning and a co-optation by decision-making bodies where all parties are not represented and where the interests of social groups are in conflict (Tadaki, Sinner and Chan 2017). This issue is even more sensitive for Indigenous peoples since their knowledge has historically been appropriated and reinterpreted to facilitate cultural assimilation and the dispossession of their homelands (Denzin, Lincoln and Smith 2008; Smith 2021).
Values are social constructions that emanate from individual and collective preferences, representations, and meanings that reflect an accumulation of experiences and a spatiotemporal context determined by conflicts and agreement between social groups. An integrative and holistic approach to value should be favored in colonial contexts to include all social groups within risk assessment (i.e., taking into account the multiple worldviews in the valuation process and considering inequalities both within and between social groups). To conduct a culturally relevant risk assessment with respect to the diversity of values and valuing, an “ethical space of engagement” (sensu Ermine 2007) between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews must be created during the research process. Practitioners must engage in a research design that fully captures Indigenous voices, perspectives and ways of being “in ways chosen by [self-determining] communities themselves” (Jolly and Thompson-Fawcett 2021, 3), working towards Indigenous sovereignty, to challenge colonial power relations rather than reinforcing them (Mignolo and Walsh 2018). Therefore, a risk assessment should embrace a collaborative framework that brings Indigenous and scientific knowledge together, engage in a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship with Indigenous individuals, communities, and authorities, and ensure that they have control over the design, conduct, and results (Asselin and Basile 2018; McKemey et al. 2022).
Riskscapes
Landscapes are social–ecological constructions based on multiple relations between communities and the geographical space. A landscape is the locus for the expression of values, experiences, and interests of individuals and communities through an infinite number of spatial practices intertwined with evolving biophysical cycles (Massey 2006; Neumann 2011). Landscapes include the material reality of space, representations and practices, and power relations (Fortin 2008b; Mitchell 2002; Schein 1997). Consequently, the landscape can be mobilized as a framework for highlighting the common features of communities and for conscious territorial planning (Bédard 2009; Fortin 2008a). For risk assessment, landscapes can reveal the multiple determinants of vulnerability and the simultaneous existence of several hazards. In this sense, the landscape is frequently used as a reference unit in approaches to risk assessment and mitigation that require a contextual and spatial understanding of values, especially in Indigenous contexts (see for example Bélisle, Wapachee and Asselin 2021; Cuerrier et al. 2015; Miller and Davidson-Hunt 2010).
The concept of riskscape, first coined by Suzan L. Cutter (1993) and later theorized by Müller-Mahn and Everts (2013) and Müller-Mahn, Everts and Stephan (2018), best synthesizes the interconnection of risk, space, and practice within the landscape. Like Müller-Mahn and colleagues, we define riskscapes as “landscapes of risk that exist in relation to practice” (Müller-Mahn, Everts and Stephan 2018, 197). This concept originates from three main ideas. First, that riskscapes derive from multiple collective perceptions toward risks and landscapes. Riskscapes are multiple, overlapping, and connected depending on various ranges of perspectives based on worldviews held by individuals navigating through and between larger social groups. Second, that the riskscape is not an objectively given phenomenon, but rather a “temporal–spatial” phenomenon (Schatzki 2010, 97) created and enacted in practice. Riskscapes are shaped and reshaped by social actors navigating between social representations, the material world, converging and diverging values with other social actors, past activities, projects for the future, and socio-political relationships from local to global scales. Finally, that riskscapes are plural according to multiple risks in relation to practices aimed to act upon them. Ways of representing risks by different practitioners — experts, stakeholders, land users, etc. — lead to different preventive measures with a spatial effect. The concept of riskscape allows analyzing the relationships between values at risk, places, and practices by particular social sectors, as well as in relation to other riskscapes in different contexts.
We posit that a landscape approach to risk may overcome the limitations of valuation methods in a colonial context. A key feature of colonialism is that it universalizes a particular conception of human-environment relationships (Proulx and Crane 2020), thus hiding alternative worldviews from practices presented as neutral and objective, such as risk assessments (Stanley 2020). As such, Indigenous worldviews have been — and still are often — ignored and devalued within processes based on scientific and technical knowledge (Castleden, Morgan and Lamb 2012; Koster, Baccar and Lemelin 2012; Smith 2021). The riskscape approach simultaneously and separately takes into account the Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews, seen not as universals but as particular ways of being with the world, to avoid considering Indigenous peoples as “just another stakeholder” (Stevenson and Webb 2003) or “reduce the Indigenous to an ethnic category” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, 81), among others. Contrary to valuation methods based solely on generalizable value concepts, riskscapes avoid oversimplifying the complexity of human-environment relationships by recognizing their plural, contextual and evolving character. Moreover, contrary to valuation methods based solely on contextual value concepts, riskscapes take into account the power relations in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews are engaged when compared.
Beyond a simple recognition of differences, riskscapes embrace the distance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews and allow non-Indigenous social groups to practice an “alternative relation” within which a dialogue is possible with self-recognized Indigenous social groups on a non-hierarchical basis (Maddison 2020, 156). In that regard, riskscapes open possibilities for planning out of the dominant modes of recognition in the “contact zone,” where Indigenous demands for sovereignty meet state-led environmental planning (Porter and Barry 2016). Riskscapes consider multiple sources of value elicitation according to the needs and desires of each social group when the risk assessment is designed collaboratively, and where the social groups are involved in the outcome directly through the process of deliberation, partially in consultation, or by expert judgment. As Larsen and Johnson (2017, 9) advanced, “[p]lace teaches coexistence, not consensus.” Consequently, practitioners cannot expect the collaborative valuation process to produce a single riskscape representing all worldviews, experiences and representations in a single setting, but multiple riskscapes where place-based worldviews, experiences and representations are related to each other in a path of actions toward coexistence in a hazard-driven environment.
Valuation of riskscapes in colonial contexts
The identification and comparison of riskscapes allow taking into account the values at risk of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. First, riskscapes are identified through a schematization of the main social groups that cohabit a given area. A contextual definition of the nature of the human–environment relations specific to each social group follows. Then, the values at risk that constitute each riskscape are identified using valuation methods in context. The values are ultimately transposed into a geographic information system (GIS) to bring light to shared values and conflicts (Figure 1). The specifics of this framework should be negotiated by stakeholders according to their respective needs and the desired outcomes.
Defining riskscapes to represent values at risk in colonial contexts, using an example where Indigenous land users share the land with non-Indigenous hunters and fishers and non-Indigenous entrepreneurs.
The GIS is widely used in various settings, from mainstream land planning (Porter 2016) to Indigenous resistance via countermapping (Hunt and Stevenson 2017; Sletto 2009). One of the challenges in bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous values through a common geospatial language is to avoid assimilating Indigenous worldviews to dominant spatial representations (Reid and Sieber 2020; Veland et al. 2014). Practitioners should be careful to guarantee Indigenous control over representations of their knowledge and means of expressing it (Reid, Sieber and Blackned 2020). Transposing values into a GIS allows for the integration of different layers of information (e.g., videos, attribute tables, images) within the same environment, where the geolocated information works more like a signpost than a finite entity (November, Camacho-Hübner and Latour 2010). While physical maps would freeze a set of representations into a fixed spatiotemporal framework, a GIS better represents the evolving and concomitant nature of different relationships to the land within the same spatial scale, a feature compatible with the spatiotemporal nature of riskscapes.
To illustrate the riskscape approach, we draw on a case study previously documented by our team (Bélisle and Asselin 2021; Bélisle, Gauthier and Asselin 2022; Bélisle, Wapachee and Asselin 2021). The study area is part of the boreal forest of northwestern Quebec, Canada on the traditional territories of the Anishnaabe and Eeyou (James Bay Cree) peoples. The regional landscape is marked by several disturbances acting over multiple spatial and temporal scales (e.g., climate change, forest fires, insect outbreaks, logging, mining, road construction, hydroelectric power generation and transmission) that modulate the vulnerability of social groups in the area.
The identification of social groups in an area is a complex step because there is an infinite number of individual relationships to the land. It is also a crucial step because it determines the scope of the riskscape. Each risk assessment in colonial contexts should have at least two social groups holding values at risk in the study area, representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews. Other combinations could be used to reflect the interests of different population groups. For example, it would be possible to define riskscapes for different genders.
A detailed knowledge of, and engagement with, a study area is necessary to adequately represent the values of the main social groups. To do this, extensive reading on regional history and field visits are necessary. As suggested by Wilson (2008), culturally relevant research that includes Indigenous communities must be accomplished through building relations with people, the land, ideas, and worldviews. A research agreement must be negotiated between representatives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous social groups, covering the project objectives, the methods of data collection and analysis, as well as the expected outcomes. In Canada, such protocols must clarify how the principles of ownership, control, access, and possession (OCAP©) of data will be respected (Schnarch 2004). The research team should also meet the ethical requirements imposed by local authorities and their own institutions before fieldwork begins. The research team should act ethically, respectfully, and humbly accept to reconsider pre-established scenarios in light of new findings.
Anishnaabe and Eeyou communities in the boreal region occupy and use their territories, despite having been forcibly sedentarized in reserves in the twentieth century. The land is divided into family hunting grounds where cultural practices are conducted, including hunting, trapping, fishing, gathering and non-provisioning activities, such as knowledge transmission and spiritual ceremonies. In addition, many industrial activities affect and fragment the land. Massive forest logging operations are conducted alongside active, abandoned, and developing mines, as well as hydroelectric dams and power transmission lines. The area is also marked by recreational and tourist hunting and fishing activities practiced by non-Indigenous people. In this environment, the main social groups with their own worldviews and interests include non-Indigenous entrepreneurs, non-Indigenous hunters and fishers, and Indigenous land users.
Data collection and analysis are conducted to define the values at risk for each social group according to their respective needs and desires. This step requires the use of qualitative contextual-based methods to reveal the nature of human–environment relations specific to each social group. Data collection must allow for the collection of place-based experiences, practices, and representations. Values are categorized based on the content expressed or revealed by social groups and not on pre-established criteria. This step can take the form of a thematic analysis of textual information, visual art, photos, or the content expressed during an interview, storytelling activities, or sharing circles (Rawluk et al. 2017; Tuck and McKenzie 2014; Wilson 2008). It can also be done with participatory mapping or mental mapping to locate and discuss places and entities of interest (Bélisle, Wapachee and Asselin 2021; Brown, Sanders and Reed 2018; Klain and Chan 2012; Wartmann and Purves 2017). In our case study, after the participants would have agreed on the research protocol, interviews with non-Indigenous entrepreneurs would identify relationships that are primarily utilitarian and economic in nature. Participatory mapping with non-Indigenous hunters and fishers would identify relationships related to recreational social and cultural practices. For Indigenous land users, a combination of interviews and participatory mapping would capture relationships to the land in terms of identity, knowledge transmission, well-being, and subsistence.
The next step is to transpose the values at risk of each social group into a spatially explicit cartographic representation within a GIS. This spatial representation of values at risk aims to reflect their material reality and their vulnerability to hazards. The categorization of values can be carried out using methods that reveal the nature of relations, that measure the magnitude of preference, or that assess contributions to a goal. For instance, the Delphi method could be used with representatives of a social group until a consensus emerges to categorize values (Navrud and Strand 2018; Toppinen et al. 2018). In the boreal region of northwestern Quebec, non-Indigenous entrepreneurs might find it appropriate to translate their values in terms of an infrastructure network with a replacement cost expressed in monetary terms, and the space could be divided into activity zones. For non-Indigenous hunters and fishers, critical access ways (roads, trails, rivers, etc.) and infrastructure useful for hunting and fishing (cabin, boat ramp, etc.) could be identified using points and lines. Indigenous land users may prefer to express their values through walking interviews on the land, where stories carrying land-based knowledge are expressed in places, transferred and geotagged within the GIS as points, and lines and areas on family hunting grounds.
Finally, an aggregation of the different riskscapes is carried out by superimposing geographic information layers. This is the final step in the process, where values are collaboratively organized in a web of relationships for decision-making purposes. This step aims to highlight the convergence of interests and conflicts between the social groups while respecting each other's valuing processes. They can emerge according to the values’ location, nature, and importance. This step must be carried out in a space where dialogue between different worldviews is possible, that is, a space where self-recognized Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups can engage in a respectful negotiation according to their respective positions. The social groups must envision their respective worldviews as different yet both valid and complementary. This step is highly context-dependent upon local relations of power, history, institutional configurations, and characteristics of the riskscape, among other things. For instance, the process may take the form of deliberation between members of different social groups negotiating their riskscape components, reaching compromise or consensus while maintaining good relationships. It is possible at this stage that social groups in a position of power will exercise greater influence during the deliberations, as they still envision their values as universal and dismiss other worldviews as “subjective.” To minimize the influence of power relations during deliberations, the discussion must be strictly organized according to a procedural code jointly elaborated between representatives of the social groups. This process can be agreed upon in advance as part of the research agreement to enumerate specific themes for discussion, to give a fair representation to each social group's valuation process, and to temper attitudes of domination. The deliberation can also take place within a panel of self-recognized experts from each social group and from different disciplines who acknowledge power relations and neutralize them with criteria putting social groups in a fair configuration. A subsequent validation of the experts’ conclusions by representatives of the social groups must then take place to ensure that the results minimize cultural bias and that the conclusions respect the valuing process and are representative of the social groups’ nuanced views.
Aggregation also makes it possible to model the potential effects of one or more hazards in the area. In northwestern Quebec, the superimposition of riskscapes in a GIS would make it possible to highlight points of convergence, such as the need to protect certain ecosystem characteristics from wildfire. Conflicts could arise, for example, over the effects of some extractive projects on Indigenous hunting grounds, cultural keystone sites, unique ecosystems, or the over-exploitation of certain species by non-Indigenous hunters and fishers. The addition of geolocated information on potential wildfires, insect outbreaks or climate change proxies would provide a better understanding of the exposure of values at risk and guide priority interventions.
Conclusion
Our synthesis shows that conventional uses of values at risk and valuation methods are inadequate for conducting risk assessment in colonial contexts, as they do not take into account the different vulnerabilities that coexist on the land. The riskscape approach, as we suggest, reduces this limitation because it simultaneously integrates different valuing paradigms into a landscape-based approach. The risk assessment method we propose allows consideration of the respective worldviews and interests of various Indigenous and non-Indigenous social groups valuing the same land. Our method makes it possible to elicit values at risk in their respective contexts and to compare them based on their convergent or conflicting relationships to space. By allowing for non-hierarchical risk assessment, the riskscape approach transcends the supposed universality of human–environment relationships in colonial contexts. More than an invitation to participation or consultation, our approach advocates for risk management rooted in anticolonial practices of coexistence.
Our work is part of an emerging field exploring the interactions of colonialism with risks and disasters (Carrigan 2015; Davies 2022; Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2020; Nunn 2018; Stanley 2020). These contributions highlight discourses and practices that enact a form of “climate coloniality” (Sultana 2022) that deepen power asymmetries and fail to address otherness in collaborative and multi-scale responses to climate change. As Haverkamp (2021, 2–3) argues, we must move from single adaptation imaginaries toward adaptation otherwise, that is, a practice “that strives for transformational ends through a reworking of the political relationality among diverse and adversarial adaptation actors and loosens the hegemonic hold of Cartesian ontology in modern politics.” Our contribution thus invites scholars and land use planners to consider the nature of the relationships that unite Indigenous populations, non-Indigenous populations, and space. Our method based on riskscapes invites practitioners to ponder on cultural heterogeneity and power relations when conducting risk assessment. Interdisciplinary collaborations and local knowledge systems are key to elicit, measure, and compare values at risk in non-hierarchical and non-colonial terms. In an era of increasing and intertwining crises, conflicts, and disasters, this method could contribute to “abundant futures” (Collard, Dempsey and Sundberg 2015) — multiple worldmaking knowledges and practices toward more diverse and autonomous forms of living on, of, and with the land.
Footnotes
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to Valérie Plante Lévesque, Dominique Arseneault, Jie He, and Adam Archambault for their thoughtful comments at different stages of writing this paper. We are also grateful to Jamie Haverkamp, Julie Snorek, and all participants to the “Beyond a single adaptation imaginary” panel at the 2023 American Association of Geographers' Annual Meeting for the opportunity to discuss this paper.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture (grant number 2020-B2Z-271055).
