3.2 Fieldwork and Participant Observation at the Research Sites
From October 2014 to November 2016, we carried out observations and collected qualitative data in these two towns of the Paraitinga watershed. The “Cemaden micro-locality” came alive during the participatory workshops of an EWS educational project based on an action research methodology (Yamori
2008) and turned students into young researchers. This is an open methodology and each school is free to devise its own ways of implementing its activities. In this article the experience in São Luiz do Paraitinga is described in greater detail, but we have also included some ideas from the experience in Cunha.
In São Luiz, twelve participatory workshops were run in the project in 2014–2015 (Table
1) and experts from several disciplines were invited—a historian from a local university and a geologist, geographer, hydrologist, civil engineer, and meteorologist, from Cemaden. A local civil defense officer also attended. The participants were prepared to examine the basic concepts of a scientific methodology and how the research activity was designed for young people. Every workshop lasted 3 h and included 15–20 volunteer students (aged between 15 and 17), teachers and civil defense teams.
Table 1
Four interrelated elements of EWS and hands-on participatory learning interdisciplinary activities led by high schools
São Luiz (12 workshops in 2014–2015) – High School Monsenhor Ignacio Gioia | Oral history and disasters Watershed mapping (using Google Earth) Fieldwork about land use Risk mapping using participatory social cartography School vulnerability assessment | Meteorological monitoring Hydrometeorological monitoring Water balance | Risk communication using wall newspaper | Protection Map Game to design a contingency plan (using social cartography methodology) 2 workshops to create a Committee for Disaster Prevention and the Protection of Life (Com-VidAção) |
Cunha (2016 academic year and seminar “Dialogues: Citizenship in socioenvironmental DRR)—High School Paulo Virginio | Oral history and disasters Watershed mapping (using Google Earth) Fieldwork about land use | Hydrometeorological monitoring | Risk communication using wall newspaper Warning issued by school Awareness campaign | Creation of a tree nursery |
In Cunha, the school adopted the theme of DRR and chose some basic scientific activities of Cemaden Education Project to run during the 2016 academic year. The school divided its more than 900 students in 17 high school classes into research groups that pursued different topics. The 2016 academic year culminated in a seminar on “Dialogues: Citizenship in socioenvironmental DRR.” During the seminar, the students had an opportunity to show the results of their research to teachers and external experts from local NGOs and the regional Secretary of Education. Researchers from Cemaden participated in a peer-to-peer dialogue that involved novice “student-researchers” and the school community in EWS.
Both the workshops in São Luiz and the seminar in Cunha were based on “dialogue-oriented” learning activities in the four subsystems of EWS, since attitudes and values are optimally challenged, tested, and rethought through dialogue and debate (Selby and Kagawa
2012). The authors were participant-observers at the research sites and also interacted in the activities, which integrated several types of data, information, traditional knowledge, and interdisciplinary scientific methods. We analyzed the relations between experts, students, and information, the building of knowledge and social representations of young people, while observing some of the obstacles and aids to the involvement of young people in EWS as a subject, but not as a recipient of warnings.
Wisner (
2006, p. 10) stated that experiential learning is the most effective way to educate students and can involve them in “inspecting the school buildings, going outside to map the surroundings, and even interviewing elders about extreme natural events in the past.” This kind of learning can be developed to strengthen basic skills in listening, writing, reporting, and mapping. The workshops in São Luiz and seminar in Cunha were essential for obtaining feedback on the project. They helped to test the basic scientific activities and methods of Cemaden Education Project and after the participating students and teachers evaluated them, it was possible to streamline the activities. The activities must be described in some detail for a better understanding of how interdisciplinary activities that are aimed at developing scientific thinking in the area of DRR can take place on the ground.
The aim of the activity on “Oral History and Disasters” was to recognize the value of intergenerational local knowledge and to enhance risk knowledge by dialoguing with different experts and generations regarding vulnerability to disasters. An oral history expert explained the basic concepts and some of the methodological procedures and techniques. In São Luiz, 18 students were divided into four groups, and each group chose one person affected by the 2010 flood to conduct an interview and ask suitable questions adapted from a range of basic suggestions. One group, for example, interviewed Mrs. Fide, an elderly woman, and asked four questions: (1) When you were a child, did many floods occur? (2) At that time, were the floods larger, smaller, or similar? (3) When you were younger, did disaster prevention exist? And, (4) How did people cope with floods before the 2010 disaster? In the course of Mrs. Fide’s answers, new questions emerged about how people exchanged information about flood monitoring, and what coping strategies people adopted. Intergenerational exchanges are important to enable the younger generation to become aware of hazards that do not occur very often or are very serious but rare events. The fact that the students did not ask questions about how to provide an early warning, but concentrated more on the history of floods, suggests that they had little knowledge of EWS. This shows the need for awareness of the value of EWS, which was provided by the local civil defense coordinator who participated in all the workshops.
After the interviews, the four groups carried out a comparison of risk communication strategies to share their knowledge. They analyzed the data and information and produced wall newspapers to show the main results of the workshop. These wall newspapers featured the highlights from the interviews and pictures of the Paraitinga disaster. This exercise was designed to give voice to and empower the participants to use creative modes of communication (Selby and Kagawa
2012). The workshop created an opportunity for intergenerational learning and for turning young people into risk communicators (Mitchell et al.
2008; Cumiskey et al.
2015). Risk communication is not synonymous with hazard warnings. Raising awareness about the value of EWS is important to extend its uses and incorporate it into daily life.
During the seminar in Cunha, youth research groups shared their findings about the oral history activity carried out in their town. Young researchers interviewed residents living in vulnerable rural and urban areas, who had already been affected by floods and landslides. Some groups included a question in the survey road map that asked the interviewees for opinions on the suggestions raised by the community for reducing risks and carrying out educational projects on DRR. During the field research, the Paulo Virgínio High School was widely praised by the community. The comments made by the elderly and poor residents about what the Jacui River was like in the past, compared to now, aroused strong feelings of solidarity among the students with these vulnerable people, and underlined the urgent need for a discussion of radical environmental, social, and economic measures for the public during the seminar “Dialogues: Citizenship in socioenvironmental DRR.”
Three workshops in São Luiz studied the risks caused by the effects of land use on the regional watershed. Several tools and methods were used to understand these risks, such as participatory social cartography, field visits conducted by researchers from Cemaden. The ability to work collaboratively and cooperatively with others was also strengthened (Selby and Kagawa
2012) by the working groups. The young researchers learned how to use Google Earth so that they could identify and map the resources, rivers, risk-prone areas, safe areas, and other factors. All the groups showed their results to the class, the invited researchers, and the civil defense coordinator who commented on and praised them for their findings. During the next workshop, the students carried out fieldwork on the Paraitinga River where they were guided by a local environmentalist, who discussed land use and local occupations, the situation of the riparian forest on the riverside and the degradation of the watershed. Experimental learning in the field was important to understand the long-term effects on the ecosystem, but some gaps remain. One of the challenges to building people-centered EWS is how to overcome the problem caused by the use of technical terms in different areas of expertise (for example, subsidence).
The next workshop introduced a methodology that involved participatory social cartography, a tool mainly used by NGOs (Gaillard and Mercer
2012) and employed to elicit some of the perceptions and concepts people have of risks, hazards, and vulnerability. The students identified the kinds of risks that can be found in the historical center of São Luiz, where most schools, churches, and households are located. The students were divided into three groups of six, and worked on a printed Google Earth satellite photograph of the town’s urban area, where they plotted significant features (for example, rivers, schools, churches, and roads). The students then identified the places most likely to have vulnerable groups (for example, schools, asylums, hospitals, nurseries); risk-prone areas and the types of hazards that can occur (for example, floods, landslides, droughts, soil erosion); and pointed out what areas they considered to be safe.
The civil defense agent showed a risk map of São Luiz, and compared the different cartographies. He pointed out that some areas identified by the young researchers as safe from flooding were actually susceptible to landslides. São Luiz also has landslide-prone areas, but the students focused on flood-prone areas—many commented on the fact that the third step of the main Church was the historical mark used as a reference-point for the highest flood level reached by the Paraitinga River. This mark was only passed by the 2010 flood, and one of the groups used this local knowledge to determine the limits of the flood-prone area. Finally, the students identified the flood protective measures that are needed, such as protecting and promoting riparian forests.
In Cunha, the students were encouraged by their geography teachers, to conduct a study of the local watersheds. During this research, the students examined images of Google Earth, compared them with a field visit to the same sites and found that natural hazards, such as flooding, occur as a result of the absence of riparian forest and the increased silting of rivers. In view of this, the students and the teachers decided to develop a tree nursery at the school and offer plants to the riverside inhabitants. One teacher was amazed about “how well students integrated their previous knowledge obtained in the area of environmental education with the newly acquired experience of DRR.”
During their lesson in social cartography, the students of São Luiz used symbols, numbers, and colors to show different features on their map. They classified the likelihood and intensity of risks for each area by assigning colors, based on those used in the monitoring room at the Cemaden—high risk (red), medium risk (orange), low risk (yellow), and normal (green).
Finally, students engaged in an activity to strengthen their response capability—the fourth element of EWS. The students of São Luiz took part in the Protection Map Game (PMG), designed by Cemaden and inspired by the Disaster Imagination Game, a Japanese method for disaster prevention.
2 The aim of this workshop was to develop a response capability among young people during an imagined emergency. The participants took part in a brainstorming session and designed a local disaster related to a mission: each group had to formulate a plan to rescue a vulnerable group from an area at risk, and lead them to a safe place. Within 10 min, they had to choose a type of hazard (flood or landslide), identify a vulnerable group on their map (for example, children in a kindergarten, or elderly people in an asylum), find a shelter, draw two escape routes to safe areas, and define the strategies needed to accomplish their mission. An interesting dialogue followed when the groups announced their contingency plans and the civil defense officer provided some feedback. The young researchers knew that the local rafting team had rescued children from schools and elderly people from asylums during the 2010 flood. They retrieved this local sociocultural information and thus showed the great value of retaining memories and past experiences to build up resilience. When asked about how the mapping was conducted during the evaluation, a student said “before the participatory mapping, we never stopped to think about risk zones and escape routes.” Another commented, “when we looked at the map, we saw that the flood-prone area was much larger than we had imagined.” Another student pointed out that, “the map helps to understand the scale of the disaster, since you look at the entire city, not just your home.” This participatory, strategic decision-making game was an excellent learning tool for everybody, including the civil defense officers and teachers who took part in the workshop. Social cartography is a useful tool that can help to involve multiple stakeholders and encourage participation (Mitchell et al.
2009; Lopez-Marrero and Tschakert
2011).
Another workshop was focused on hydrometeorological monitoring and guided by a meteorologist who talked about both excessive rainfall, which can cause floods and landslides, and a lack of rain, which causes droughts. The meteorologist asked the students of São Luiz whether they knew what a rain gauge was and what the weather data in millimeters actually meant on the ground. Since the students did not know that precipitation could be measured, they had to learn some basic concepts about weather, monitoring, and data collection. During the seminar in Cunha, the students described one of the issues that came up while making handmade rain gauges out of plastic bottles. During the students’ field activity in Cunha, one group explained the project to a resident and asked to install a handmade rain gauge in her house, which was located in an area at risk for landslide. During the dialogue with the resident, the students found that the elderly woman was illiterate. To solve this problem, the students created a rain gauge using images and colors to help in reading the rain gauge and enable data collection—a similar initiative was reported by Baudoin et al. (
2016) in their analysis of EWS in Sri Lanka. During the seminar in Cunha, the school director also proudly reported that in February 2016 a heavy summer rainfall occurred. When the students observed the data logger of the semiautomatic rain gauge installed in the school library, it showed 100 mm in 24 h—a threshold that the municipal civil defense team classified as dangerous. The students asked whether they could communicate this risk, in particular to children living in rural areas, and went to all the classrooms explaining the observation and EWS. The whole school was informed by this group of students and many others informed their parents about the warning issued by school.