Project description DEENESFRITPL Learning from animals how to recover from disasters Disasters such as floods, drought and wildfires have devastating consequences on the lives and habitats of both humans and animals. Yet, many animal species manage to adapt and survive. With more extreme climate events expected in the coming years, humans could surely benefit from understanding the manifold adaptation strategies of animals to disasters. Funded by the European Research Council, the ABIDE project will investigate how multispecies communities cope and persist in wildfire-prone areas of Australia, Brazil and Portugal. Drawing on expertise from an interdisciplinary team, the project aims to shed light on how animals adjust and recover from disasters, translating it into human terms for better social resilience and governance of disasters. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective What and how can we learn from animals about recovering from disasters? How can we hear them in their own terms, translate their stories, and include their perspectives, in human knowledge about disasters? This project explores the resilience of multispecies communities, and their capacities for healing and bouncing back from disasters, through the point of view of nonhuman animals. It departs from the current context of acute climate crisis, which sets the stage for Dantesque scenarios of impending climate-driven disasters such as wildfires, floods, tornados and hurricanes, with related extensive loss of both human and nonhuman lives, liveable dwellings and species extinction. Focusing on wildfires as disasters that challenge previous expert knowledge due to climate change and human exploitation of natural resources, we propose to compare three countries where wildfires have taken on increasingly critical proportions every year: Brazil, Australia and Portugal. We address a species gap in our knowledge of disasters, and wildfires in particular, by exploring the possibilities of learning with animals how to live and cope with extreme change and uncertainty in wildfire-prone areas. Drawing on contributions from sociologists, anthropologists, ethologists, biologists and geographers, ABIDE aims at attuning to, translating and including the voices, stories and experiences of animals into our knowledge of how multispecies communities can better recover from the traumatic experience of wildfires. In the end, we seek to build the foundations for a new interdisciplinary framework for addressing humans' and animals' ability to build and abide in multispecies communities that are more resilient to wildfires and other disasters. In so doing, we aspire to identify the landmarks of a post-species episteme, and thus push forward the frontiers of knowledge of human-animal relations, as well as contribute to a more-than-human governance of disasters. Fields of science social sciencessociologygovernancenatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes Programme(s) HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2021-COG - ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS Call for proposal ERC-2021-COG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC) Host institution INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS SOCIAIS Net EU contribution € 1 999 970,00 Address AV PROF ANIBAL DE BETTENCOURT 9 1600 189 Lisboa Portugal See on map Region Continente Área Metropolitana de Lisboa Área Metropolitana de Lisboa Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 999 970,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS SOCIAIS Portugal Net EU contribution € 1 999 970,00 Address AV PROF ANIBAL DE BETTENCOURT 9 1600 189 Lisboa See on map Region Continente Área Metropolitana de Lisboa Área Metropolitana de Lisboa Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 999 970,00
