Gopal Krishna Panda – författare

Indigenous People and Nature: Insights for Social, Ecological, and Technological Sustainability examines today's environmental challenges in light of traditional knowledge, linking insights from geography, population, and environment from a wide range of regions around the globe. Organized in four parts, the book describes the foundations of human geography and its current research challenges, the intersections between environment and cultural diversity, addressing various type of ecosystem services and their interaction with the environment, the impacts of sustainability practices used by indigenous culture on the ecosystem, and conservation ecology and environment management.

Using theoretical and applied insights from local communities around the world, this book helps geographers, demographers, environmentalists, economists, sociologists and urban planners tackle today's environmental problems from new perspectives.

The book seeks to comprehend how indigenous knowledge systems of local communities can be effectively used in disaster management of various types. A prime example is the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, promoting indigenous environmental management knowledge and practices. Traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples includes information and insight that supplement conventional science and environmental observations, a comprehensive understanding of the environment, natural resources, culture, and human interactions with them which is not documented before. A great deal of this knowledge have been lost in translation. In this book, the authors attempt to keep a record of each and every traditional knowledge study of the indigenous communities in managing the disasters.

This book is organized into four major sections. Thefirst part gives an overview and help in conceptualizing the different concepts of hazard and disaster perception and how response and adaptation are connected with it. This part also discusses the concept of the connection between hazard and sustainable development and how the understanding of risk reduction and resilience can happen with the help of indigenous knowledge, insights, and strategies.

Part 3 of this book describes the concept of sustainability through indigenous knowledge and practice. The sole highlight of this chapter is the indigenous knowledge efficacies in disaster identification, risk reduction, climate risk management, and climate action.

The last section of the book explores how to meet the gaps between local knowledge and policy formulation. It highlights how traditional knowledge of the indigenous communities can prove to be beneficial in developing a holistic regional-based policy framework which will be easily accepted by the target stakeholders since they will be more acquainted with the local strategies and methods. This section ends with an assessment and discussion of the gaps and future scopes in disaster risk reduction through integrating local knowledge and modern technologies.

The book illustrates a geospatial and geostatistical approach to data analysis, modeling, risk assessment, and visualization, as well as landslide hazard management in the hilly region. This book investigates cutting-edge methodologies based on open source software and R statistical programming and modeling in current decision-making procedures, with a particular emphasis on recent advances in data mining techniques and robust modeling in torrential rainfall and earthquake induced landslide hazard.