DISASTERSHow Emotions Influence How People Deal with Natural Disasters
Researchers led by a University of Montrel architecture professor look at how fear, anger and pride combine to shape responses to climate risks in four Latin American communities.
Cecilia lives in Carahatas, a coastal village in Cuba threatened by rising sea levels caused by climate change. Experts predict that part of the village could be under water within 50 years. Government authorities have responded with plans to gradually relocate residents to higher ground. But Cecilia and other locals claim their community is perfectly capable of coping with flood risks and climate change.
Like Carahatas, many parts of the world are experiencing increasingly extreme weather events that test the resilience of local communities: drought, heat waves, landslides, floods, hurricanes, tropical storms. To help address the challenges, Université de Montréal architecture professor Gonzalo Lizarralde has led an effort to study how those affected respond and how local leaders deal with how they feel about the situation.
Funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, Lizarralde and his co-researchers spent extended periods from 2016 to 2020 in four Latin American communities affected by recent climate disasters – Carahatas in Cuba, Yumbo and Salgar in Colombia, and Concepción in Chile – getting to know residents and 14 of their leaders. The research is published in the February 2025 issue of Emotion, Space and Society.
The interdisciplinary team of experts in architecture, urban planning, engineering, social work, anthropology and social geography found that a range of emotions in those communities – fear, anxiety and anger, but also pride and reverence for nature – are important factors in whether people ultimately decide or not to implement solutions to the extreme weather events they face.
Integrating into Local Life
“When experts arrive in a community, they’re often seen as outsiders, which can skew the results, of their research” said Lizarralde. “To avoid this, we decided to integrate into local life for an extended time, taking part in residents’ activities and working with local teams and other researchers. This ethnographic approach enabled us to gain a much deeper understanding of people’s daily lives.”
To understand the challenges and strategies of community leaders, the team conducted in-depth interviews with them, reviewed their social media posts, and directly observed their efforts to mitigate disaster risks and combat the impacts of climate change, often in environments characterized by precarious living conditions and informal urbanization.
The research team also organized workshops in the four communities to create spaces for dialogue and collaboration among the local leaders, the researchers and students of architecture and urban planning.
