Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ABIDE (Animal ABidings: recoverIng from DisastErs in more-than-human communities)
Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2025-10-31
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?
ABIDE 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.
ABIDE 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.
We focus on three national case studies: Australia, Brazil and Portugal. In each country, we selected one particular biome, and a few contact zones, where we engage with the local and/or indigenous communities, fully acknowledging ancient ways of engaging with the more-than-human worlds.
We work with the animal species and their multispecies entanglements that, in the targeted regions, may be more creative in their recovery practices. After consulting with local stakeholders (residents, local governments, conservation biologists, veterinarians), we are selecting species that may bring a new light into how humans, animals, plants, and the material world are intertwined in their experiences of disasters, constituting “insight knots” to better understand recovery.
ABIDE unfolds throughout four phases or research stages:
1. EXPLORING the normative narratives of animals in disasters in policy documents and the media. Here, we untangle the social narratives that frame our shared more-than-human practices of living with, and experiencing fire. We follow the thread of such narratives in public policies and the media.
Regarding public policy, we collect and analyze legal and normative instruments, as well as official documents and management plans around wildfire management and animal protection in each of the three countries. In Australia and Brazil, both federal states (unlike Portugal), we are looking at the federal and state levels. This information is compiled in a database on public policies, animals and disasters, updated throughout the project’s duration, thus setting the basis for an observatory on the topic.
Regarding the Media, we collect news pieces from traditional media (newspaper and television), as well as written and visual materials from social media, from each of the three countries under study. This information is compiled in a database, setting a methodology for an observatory on the topic.
Both databases will be made available for scientific secondary analysis by students and scholars, after the end of the project.
2. OBSERVING, through multispecies ethnography and geographical mapping, how animals are recovering. Here, we are looking for social practices through which humans and animals engage with the damaged landscape and territory. Our focus is on the recovery phase. We aim at reconstituting animals’ experiences of recovery by untying contact zones where multispecies encounters between animals, plants, fire and humans co-emerge. We use multispecies and sensorial methods, species-sensitive, to venture into the post-disaster umwelten of animals. We also attend to their lived geographies and mobility, behaviours and place-making. To map how animals relate to, and reoccupy, a territory that has been hurt by fire, we use Geographical Mapping and GIS (Geographical Information Systems), complemented with Artificial Intelligence and citizen science.
3: STORYING, or reconstituting multispecies and animals' biographies of post-disaster landscapes, aka "zoegraphies of disaster". Here, we analyse and explore the multispecies data collected in Stages 1 and 2 to experiment with new methods of storytelling. We want our scientific account to become closer to animals’ lives and experiences of disasters, in particular their recovery practices and strategies. We aim at co-producing with other animals what we coin as "zoegraphies of disasters" – biographies of the human and nonhuman zoe involved in, and recovering from, disasters.
4. ENGAGING with multilevel stakeholders to co-produce and test our pilot in multispecies governance of disasters. Here, we organize what we learnt from animals to propose a Pilot in Multispecies Governance of Disasters – a model to organize disaster governance that includes the contribution of nonhuman animals. We then engage with the stakeholders working in the field, at the local and/or global levels, to test this model.
We work with the animal species and their multispecies entanglements that, in the targeted regions, may be more creative in their recovery practices. After consulting with local stakeholders (residents, local governments, conservation biologists, veterinarians), we are selecting species that may bring a new light into how humans, animals, plants, and the material world are intertwined in their experiences of disasters, constituting “insight knots” to better understand recovery.
ABIDE unfolds throughout four phases or research stages:
1. EXPLORING the normative narratives of animals in disasters in policy documents and the media. Here, we untangle the social narratives that frame our shared more-than-human practices of living with, and experiencing fire. We follow the thread of such narratives in public policies and the media.
Regarding public policy, we collect and analyze legal and normative instruments, as well as official documents and management plans around wildfire management and animal protection in each of the three countries. In Australia and Brazil, both federal states (unlike Portugal), we are looking at the federal and state levels. This information is compiled in a database on public policies, animals and disasters, updated throughout the project’s duration, thus setting the basis for an observatory on the topic.
Regarding the Media, we collect news pieces from traditional media (newspaper and television), as well as written and visual materials from social media, from each of the three countries under study. This information is compiled in a database, setting a methodology for an observatory on the topic.
Both databases will be made available for scientific secondary analysis by students and scholars, after the end of the project.
2. OBSERVING, through multispecies ethnography and geographical mapping, how animals are recovering. Here, we are looking for social practices through which humans and animals engage with the damaged landscape and territory. Our focus is on the recovery phase. We aim at reconstituting animals’ experiences of recovery by untying contact zones where multispecies encounters between animals, plants, fire and humans co-emerge. We use multispecies and sensorial methods, species-sensitive, to venture into the post-disaster umwelten of animals. We also attend to their lived geographies and mobility, behaviours and place-making. To map how animals relate to, and reoccupy, a territory that has been hurt by fire, we use Geographical Mapping and GIS (Geographical Information Systems), complemented with Artificial Intelligence and citizen science.
3: STORYING, or reconstituting multispecies and animals' biographies of post-disaster landscapes, aka "zoegraphies of disaster". Here, we analyse and explore the multispecies data collected in Stages 1 and 2 to experiment with new methods of storytelling. We want our scientific account to become closer to animals’ lives and experiences of disasters, in particular their recovery practices and strategies. We aim at co-producing with other animals what we coin as "zoegraphies of disasters" – biographies of the human and nonhuman zoe involved in, and recovering from, disasters.
4. ENGAGING with multilevel stakeholders to co-produce and test our pilot in multispecies governance of disasters. Here, we organize what we learnt from animals to propose a Pilot in Multispecies Governance of Disasters – a model to organize disaster governance that includes the contribution of nonhuman animals. We then engage with the stakeholders working in the field, at the local and/or global levels, to test this model.
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 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.
ABIDE has also a strong interdisciplinarity focus. With a team is made of scholars from different theoretical and methodological backgrounds, we join at the table sociology, anthropology, geography, conservation biology, ecology, multispecies ethnography, and the arts. We aim at building an interdisciplinary, multidimensional, knowledge of recovery which not only unsettles the species divide, by including the perspectives of animals; but also weaves together the knowledge of the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.
More information, including our Logo and visual identity, can be found at the project’s website: abide.ics.ulisboa.pt/en/
ABIDE has also a strong interdisciplinarity focus. With a team is made of scholars from different theoretical and methodological backgrounds, we join at the table sociology, anthropology, geography, conservation biology, ecology, multispecies ethnography, and the arts. We aim at building an interdisciplinary, multidimensional, knowledge of recovery which not only unsettles the species divide, by including the perspectives of animals; but also weaves together the knowledge of the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.
More information, including our Logo and visual identity, can be found at the project’s website: abide.ics.ulisboa.pt/en/