Tackling the risks of extreme events (PALM-TREES)

In Africa, climate extremes such as floods, droughts and heatwaves have differential impacts on communities and individuals. The impacts and risks associated with extreme events are modulated by geographies, gender and intersecting social identities which are marginalized by current norms, policies and practices.

This project will re-conceptualize extreme events, including floods, droughts, and heatwaves, as ‘multidimensional compound extremes’ to develop improved hazard diagnostics, narrative tools, and risk impact metrics that better characterize the physical and socio-economic drivers of impacts for people on the margins to support more inclusive climate-related practices and policies.

This project aims to:

1) Support the transformation of risk mitigation policies and practices guided by the gendered lived experiences of those on the margins;
2) Produce research that supports climate services for climate resilience across conventionally codified temporal and spatial scales;
3) Better understand the norms that prevent gender equality and inclusion in research environments;
4) Better understand the participation of vulnerable communities in policies and practices designed to build climate resilience and how to change them; and
5) Better understand the barriers to creating sustainable networks between research-practitioner networks in Africa and solutions that can support independent and locally embedded networks led by African researchers