Geoethical Consideration in the Understanding of Population Representation and Perception of Flooding Risk Management in Bukavu, DR Congo

Disaster and risk management has been a very necessary field of both debate and action initiatives in today tricky consequences of climate change. While some regions of the earth are affected by heavy drought, other regions are affected by heavy rains that cause damages on infrastructure, economy, ecosystem and human lives. This contribute to vulnerability of cities.

Nowadays, in many cities of DR Congo, there is increasing of flooding risk and hydrological risk associated like erosion, gully erosion. In DR Congo (a tropical context) the months of November and December and between January and April, heavy rains use to occur and cause severe damages to people and theirs goods in vulnerable zones for instance the  major river basin. Before the end of 2023 from December 24 to December 29, 2023 episodes of rains affected Bukavu and DRC cities like Kananga and Kinshasa. The different episodes of flooding raise the question of risk management. In this process a necessity to consider geoethics as interconnection of geosciences with social, philosophy, and politics may allow to reinforce the debate on flood risk management.

Taking account of the precedent issues, it is important to question: in which way geoethical values can help to understand the link between population representation and perception of flooding risk and disaster management in Bukavu, DR Congo? To respond to this, this reflection will scrutinize in one hand, the geoethical principles as the basis of understanding of flood risk perception and representation in Bukavu and on the other hand, it will analyze the implication of different actors in the awareness building on disaster management.

The investigation concerning population representation and perception of flood risk, will better inform on people resilience and adaptive actions and how they cope with their natural risks impacts. In this reflection, we bring into the consideration of geoethical values to better understand population representation and perception of flood risk.

Key words: Disaster and risk management, Geoethics, Flood risk, Geoethical values or Geoethical principles, Bukavu, DR Congo