Disaster risk reduction and Evangelical Christianity: a case for pluriversality in practice

TL;DR

This paper explores how to bridge the gap between disaster risk reduction and Evangelical Christianity using the concept of pluriversality.

Contribution

It introduces pluriversality as a novel approach to engage with religious perspectives in disaster risk reduction.

Findings

The DRR framework struggles to engage with religious communities like Evangelical Christians.

Pluriversality allows for inclusive dialogue without epistemic relativism.

Recognizing diverse narratives can counter fatalist views and promote DRR action.

Abstract

As climate change increases the probability and intensity of major disasters, urgent action is required to prepare for and address the underlying causes of disaster. The disaster risk reduction (DRR) framework was adopted to focus national and international attention on the social production of vulnerability to disaster risk, yet it faces politically mobilised opposition, including from the Evangelical Christian (EC) community. This article suggests that DRR's engagement with traditional, Indigenous, and local knowledge is ill suited to deal with such challenges and explores the concept of pluriversality as a way to create points of interconnection and pragmatic engagement between DRR advocates and ECs. The paper argues that pluriversality provides a standard for inclusion of radical difference without embracing epistemic relativism or modernist domination. Rather than insisting on modernist terms of engagement and the rejection of religious narratives of disaster, this paper argues that recognising value in different narratives of nature and disaster is necessary to contest fatalist and scapegoating narratives that underpin EC opposition to DRR and to spur pragmatic action on DRR.