Building Disaster Resilience with Indigenous Knowledge in Rural Fiji

Abstract

Pacific islands are widely recognized to be vulnerable to natural hazards due to its location and characteristics as small island states. Despite this, the communities have survived the recurrent natural hazards and have accumulated the extensive knowledge and experience to cope with them. Although the benefits of indigenous knowledge within disaster risk reduction are begun to be recognized, only a few researches is available. This paper takes up the issue of housings which are frequently damaged or destroyed by the seasonal cyclones and understand the indigenous knowledge associated with them in rural Fiji in a holistic way.