The Politics of Climate Change and Uncertainty in India

Lyla Mehta, Hans Nicolai Adam, Shilpi Srivastava, Lyla Mehta, Hans Nicolai Adam, Shilpi Srivastava

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032368368
• eBook ISBN: 9781000531534
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book brings together diverse perspectives concerning uncertainty and climate change in India. Uncertainty is a key factor shaping climate and environmental policy at international, national and local levels. Climate change and events such as cyclones, floods, droughts and changing rainfall patterns create uncertainties that planners, resource managers and local populations are regularly confronted with. In this context, uncertainty has emerged as a "wicked problem" for scientists and policymakers, resulting in highly debated and disputed decision-making.

The book focuses on India, one of the most climatically vulnerable countries in the world, where there are stark socio-economic inequalities in addition to diverse geographic and climatic settings. Based on empirical research, it covers case studies from coastal Mumbai to dryland Kutch and the Sundarbans delta in West Bengal. These localities offer ecological contrasts, rural–urban diversity, varied exposure to different climate events, and diverse state and official responses. The book unpacks the diverse discourses, practices and politics of uncertainty and demonstrates profound differences through which the "above", "middle" and "below" understand and experience climate change and uncertainty. It also makes a case for bringing together diverse knowledges and approaches to understand and embrace climate-related uncertainties in order to facilitate transformative change.

Appealing to a broad professional and student audience, the book draws on wide-ranging theoretical and conceptual approaches from climate science, historical analysis, science, technology and society studies, development studies and environmental studies. By looking at the intersection between local and diverse understandings of climate change and uncertainty with politics, culture, history and ecology, the book argues for plural and socially just ways to tackle climate change in India and beyond.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003257585, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1Climate change and uncertaintyPolitics and perspectives

Shilpi Srivastava, Lyla Mehta and Hans Nicolai Adam

DOI: 10.4324/9781003257585-1

Introduction

Climate change is one of the most critical development challenges of our times. Across the globe, a range of climatic shocks and stressors, often framed as “extreme” or “freak events”, in the form of floods, droughts, heatwaves and cyclones are intensifying and slowly becoming the new normal (IPCC 2018). Research over the past few decades has demonstrated clearly the links between anthropogenically induced emissions and climate change (IPCC 2014, 2018). Through modelling and analysis, a range of projections for the future have been presented and contested, triggering a new kind of regulatory politics on scenarios and pathways (Beck and Mahony 2017). However, despite these scientific advancements, uncertainties in climate change projections remain particularly high with respect to the scale, intensity and impact of climate change (Curry and Webster 2011). These uncertainties, combined with economic and political drivers of change, make local-level effects difficult to predict (IPCC-SREX 2012) and can also lead to challenges in climate change-related decision-making (Wilby and Dessai 2010)

Uncertainty is characterised by indeterminacies where not enough is known about the probabilities of a particular set of outcomes and where they cannot be calculated (Knight 1921). Unlike risk, where probabilities of both outcomes and likelihoods are known (Wynne 1992; Stirling 1999), uncertainty is a situation where one does not know the odds and the probabilities cannot be calculated (Scoones and Stirling 2020). Walker et al. (2003: 5) define uncertainty as “any deviation from the unachievable ideal of completely deterministic knowledge of the relevant system” and highlight the importance of understanding the various dimensions of uncertainty for response and action. Within climate change debates, uncertainty is often referred to as a “super wicked problem” or a “monster” (van der Sluijs 2005; Levin et al. 2012) and scientists are increasingly acknowledging that uncertainty is here to stay and it may not be entirely possible to reduce or control (IPCC 2014).

However, there are deep differences in the ways uncertainty is understood, communicated and configured in policy- and decision-making around climate change (see Chapter 2). More fundamentally, significant gaps remain between how uncertainty is dealt within climate science and policy (characterised as the “above” in this volume), how it is experienced by people in their everyday lives (characterised as the “below” in this volume;) and how it is mediated and translated by the “middle” (i.e. the knowledge brokers and intermediaries between the two). These issues are the core focus of the book. Introducing the heuristics of the “above”, “middle” and “below”, we argue that theorising about climate-related uncertainty by experts, modellers and policymakers may have very little to do with how local people (men, women, third gender who are, in turn, differentiated by age, ableism, class, caste, location and ethnicity) make sense of climate change and live with climate-related uncertainties in everyday settings (see Figure 1.1). We demonstrate in different empirical settings that the reaction from “above” has often been to minimise and control uncertainty and capture it through quantitative assessments and modelling exercises. However, global and regional climate models are less predictable at the local level, especially because climate change often interacts with wider socio-economic drivers of change, increasing local-level uncertainties. For example, as discussed in Chapter 2, climate change models are associated with a “cascade of uncertainties” that increase with downscaling. These relate to uncertainties in projections, response to changes at global and national scales and the spatial and temporal distribution of impacts, thus creating an “envelope of uncertainty” (Wilby and Dessai 2010). The empirical chapters on Kutch, the Sundarbans and Mumbai demonstrate this cascading view of uncertainty in this volume.

FIGURE 1.1 A dwelling on the verge of being washed away in Ghoramara Island, Sundarbans, India (Photo credit: Shibaji Bose)

A growing number of authors have discussed key differences between how experts (be they policymakers or scientists) and local people view and experience climate change (e.g. Hastrup and Skrydrstup 2013; Rudiak-Gould 2013; Hulme 2015; Conway et al. 2019). These authors have attempted to validate the place-based knowledge and agency of local expertise vis-à-vis climate and its changes underlining the epistemic contrasts (see García-del-Amo et al. 2020 for Spain; Das 2021 for India). This book builds on this scholarship and demonstrates deep differences in the ways different actors understand and experience climate change and uncertainty. It argues that diverse knowledges and plural approaches need to be deployed to understand and embrace climate-related uncertainties to facilitate transformative and socially just adaptation. The voices and experiences from “below” matter because it is these vulnerable groups living on the frontline – and the least responsible for creating climate change – who bear the brunt of anthropogenic climate change. Thus, their knowledges, experiences and responses must inform and feed into wider climate debates and strategies. Our research from India’s drylands, wetlands and coast reveals that, neglecting locally relevant and bottom-up perspectives can lead to interventions that exacerbate uncertainties and vulnerabilities of poor and marginalised social groups.

The book demonstrates that it is important to capture a range of perceptions, experiences and responses to climate change and uncertainty (cf. Crate and Nuttall 2009; Jasanoff 2010; Wynne 2010) to appreciate the diverse dimensions of climate and address appropriate strategies regarding both adaptation and mitigation that go beyond short-term incremental impacts and address structural change. For many vulnerable groups at the forefront of climate change, adapting through incremental changes is clearly not sufficient, both because of their limited adaptive capacity and the neglect of wider structural conditions of inequity, powerlessness and marginalisation which can enable maladaptation and intensify structural inequalities and local vulnerabilities (Eriksen et al. 2021). These call for deep-rooted structural transformations (O’Brien 2012).

This volume addresses these challenges and epistemological tensions by examining the concept of uncertainty in relation to climate change from various vantage points of the “above”, “middle” and “below”, with specific reference to India. It also explores to what extent and how these divides can be bridged so that new hybrid perspectives can facilitate more transformative pathways to adapt to climate change. Our core proposition is that investigating and unpacking the gaps in diverse conceptions of uncertainty can facilitate processes that embrace rather than eliminate uncertainty. This is because subjective judgements, multiple knowledges and interpretations around uncertainty tend to be the best way forward instead of a singular value or recommendation (Stirling et al. 2007; Leach et al. 2010; Eriksen et al. 2015; Nightingale et al. 2020). These can ultimately help promote adaptation and mitigation processes that are both socially just and responsive to the socio-ecological diversity of contexts.

Climate change and uncertainty in the Indian context

India is not only a global hotspot for climate change impacts (Mani et al. 2018) but also has large population sections that are highly vulnerable to the impacts from climate variability and change (IPCC 2014). The causes for this social vulnerability are manifold. The majority of India’s population remains dependent on climate-sensitive livelihoods such as agriculture, fisheries, forestry and allied activities. Besides, widespread poverty and growing social, economic and political inequalities in both rural and urban areas adversely affect adaptive capacities of local populations. A recent IPCC report (2018) warns that if global temperatures were to rise beyond 1.5 ℃, India faces the prospect of being hit by unprecedented climate extremes and a sharp rise in extreme vulnerabilities of its population by 2050, with some areas potentially becoming uninhabitable. In 2020, 75% of districts suffer from climate extremes, with interchanging floods and droughts causing most damages and a spike in such events specifically from 2005 onwards (Mohanty 2020). While extreme events are not new to India (see the historical analysis in Chapter 3), their frequency and severity have increased in recent years. India’s pastoralists, farmers and fishers are severely affected because their traditional ways of living and coping with climate uncertainties are being tested as new uncertainties – which we term radical uncertainty – are threatening their livelihoods further (see Chapters 4–6). When new patterns (such as increased frequency or severity of floods) are witnessed in areas that are historically, for the most part, exposed to droughts (e.g. Kutch; Chapter 4), knowledge uncertainties abound as there is little or no prior experience or data to fall back on, giving rise to radical uncertainty. How should India prepare for climate action in the context of this radical uncertainty?

As an emerging economy, India is the third largest contributor to Green House Gases (GHGs) emissions globally, while also having one of the lowest GHG emissions per capita (Dubash 2019). Development inequalities are, however, not limited to differences between the global North and global South. As a recent st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Lists of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• List of acronyms
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 Climate change and uncertainty: politics and perspectives
• 2 Uncertainty from “above”: diverse understandings, politics and implications
• 3 Uncertainty and environmental change: Kutch and the Sundarbans as environmental histories of climate change
• 4 Between the market and climate change: uncertainty and transformation in Kutch
• 5 The certainty of uncertainty: climate change realities of the Indian Sundarbans
• 6 Climate change and uncertainty in India’s maximum city, Mumbai
• 7 Bridging gaps in understandings of climate change and uncertainty
• 8 Conclusion
• Index