Climate change and uncertainty from ‘above’ and ‘below’: perspectives from India

Abstract

Climate-related uncertainty refers to the inability to predict the scale, intensity, and impact of climate change on human and natural environments. Debates of uncertainty in climate change have emerged as a 'super wicked' problem for scientists and policy makers alike. The article draws on ongoing research in different socio-ecological and cultural settings in India (Kutch, the Sundarbans and Mumbai) and introduces the heuristic of the 'above', 'middle' and 'below' to explore how climate change and uncertainty are understood and experienced by diverse actors. Responses from 'above' (especially by planners and policy makers) tend to be directed towards controlling uncertainty through top-down, techno-managerial solutions whereas scientists tend to rely on quantitative assessments and models based on probabilistic scenarios. These may have little to do with the experiences and lived realities of local people, especially in the global South, who are often at the frontline of climate change. Also at the local level, climate-related uncertainties seldom stand alone, rather they closely interact with other socio-economic drivers of change that create new uncertainties and vulnerabilities, especially for poor and powerless people constraining their adaptation choices. This article demonstrates deep differences in ways different actors understand and experience climate change and uncertainty. It argues that diverse knowledge and approaches need to be deployed to understand and embrace climate related uncertainties in order to facilitate socially just adaptation.

Resilient Water Infrastructure Design Brief

“…For example, population growth affects land-use patterns and increases the extent of paved surfaces, which generate more runoff and worsen floods. In addition, demographics, land-use changes, ecological variability, water management policies, and socioeconomic and political trends can also alter the performance of water infrastructure (Mehta et al 2019 (Mendoza et al 2018).…”

Challenging the Environment: Uncertain Pathways to Transformation in/for India

“…The variability and uncertainty in precipitation, seasonal changes, temperature, or extreme events affect both lay people and those directly dependent on the environment for livelihoodsforesters, foragers, pastoralists, fishers, herders, and farmers. However, policy makers, state agencies, climate scientists and community organizers may have their own take on climate related uncertainty which translate into action or lack of action to address climate change impacts (Mehta et al, 2019). Uncertainty is understood, interpreted, mediated, experienced and explained in different ways by diverse sets of stakeholders.…”

“…An integrated focus on ecological, epistemic and political economy related uncertainty (Mehta et al, 1999) is required to address the new complex and compound risks in the selected sites. Meeting such environmental challenges also require a trans-disciplinary approach which can bring "to the fore hidden and alternative perspectives and solutions whilst highlighting the need to address the power imbalances that prevent alternatives ways of valuation and epistemic diversity, so urgently required to address growing climate related uncertainties" (Mehta et al, 2019(Mehta et al, : 1545.…”

“…While there are excellent examples for community based natural resource management and collective choice arrangements in forestry, water, and pasture (Menon et al, 2007), there have also been a very large number of conflicts ranging in scale from intra and inter-village contestation to interstate, and bi-lateral conflicts across South Asian nation-states. If there is a tendency to ignore science, expert reports, and indigenous knowledge systems in natural resource management, there is also a very rich tradition of social science and natural science research on environment that critiques the colonial basis of environmental science (Grove and Grove, 1996;Sivaramakrishnan, 2008;Rangarajan, 1999), that argues from the vantage point of culturally rooted resource dependencies of indigenous communities (Agrawal, 1999), and has contributed to policy and governance debates in ways that recognize the complexity of socio-environmental and socio-technical systems (Bavinck and Jyotishi, 2014).…”

Unpacking uncertainty and climate change from ‘above’ and ‘below’

“…Its starting premise is that theorizing about uncertainty from 'above' by experts, modellers and policymakers needs to be complemented by how local people (rich and poor) live with, understand and cope with uncertainty in everyday settings from 'below'. We build on the Mehta et al's heuristic of the 'above', 'middle' and 'below' to reveal differences and tensions in ways that different actors understand and experience climate change and uncertainty (see Mehta et al 2019). The special issue focusses on the diverse discourses and practices of climate change uncertainty from 'below' and from 'above', and their interaction in diverse socio-ecological settings as well as the knowledge politics that shape and alter responses to uncertainty.…”