Weaving a Web of Resilience: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge in Global Catastrophic Risk Governance

Weaving a Web of Resilience: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge in Global Catastrophic Risk Governance Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk, 2024 Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge, UK, 17-18 September, 2024 Dr Elena Kavanagh, School of Law, University College Cork Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) pose unprecedented threats to humanity. As custodians of the lands, Indigenous Peoples possess non-state-centred traditional Indigenous Knowledge passed down across generations that could be invaluable in mitigating GCRs. The main argument of this paper is that global catastrophic risk management strategies should actively involve Indigenous Peoples and integrate their Knowledge. Indigenous environmental and cultural practices offer critical insights and resilience strategies often overlooked in existential risk studies. However, some Indigenous languages and cultures are fast disappearing, making it even more urgent to accumulate and incorporate their Knowledge and experience. We argue against extractive practices in relation to Indigenous Knowledge. There is an urgent need for participatory justice that recognise and actively incorporate Indigenous Knowledge in the risk assessment, planning, and execution phases of catastrophic risk management. By doing so, we aim to bridge the gap between traditional and modern risk mitigation tactics in the face of global existential threats. Global, international and regional cooperation and adaptive governance models are the prerequisites of resilience in the face of GCRs' dynamic nature. However, due to current geopolitical tensions, intergovernmental cooperation is shifting toward multipolarity. As a case study, this paper analyses the processes predating the creation of the Arctic Council. It successfully functioned for nearly thirty years as a best practice provider for integrating Indigenous Knowledge into environmental decisions. However, the global geopolitical context led to the Arctic Council's paralysis after February 2022.