Invitation to photograpers: Visualizing indigenous DRI solutions

Across the Coalition's programmes, from mountain regions to small island developing states, one theme recurs: traditional and indigenous knowledge. CDRI's Global Infrastructure Resilience reports show that disaster-related losses run into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and the indirect losses from disrupted services routinely exceed the cost of the physical damage itself while highlighting the nature-based and traditional solutions that complement, substitute, or safeguard conventional “grey” infrastructure.

Building resilience is no longer optional, it is one of the highest-return investments a community can make, and traditional indigenous knowledge is a proven tool for reducing risk at low cost. This context helps to bring those indigenous knowledge and practices into view, document them, and bring them into mainstream discourse of promoting disaster resilient infrastructure.

CDRI invites photographers to capture indigenous and traditional practices that have made communities resilient to natural hazards and to share the story of their resilience characteristics and impact. A qualifying subject is any traditional or indigenous practice, structure, or system that helps a community withstand, absorb, or recover from a natural hazard. It may be something built, or something ecological, but is physical.