From climate adaptation to climate justice: Critical reflections on the IPCC and Himalayan climate knowledges

Abstract

The IPCC reports represent a powerful discursive and institutional undertaking. However, the IPCC has faced criticism for its different organizational and functional biases which include a geographical bias favoring experts from the global north, a gender bias in favor of men, a disciplinary bias in favor of the natural sciences over the social sciences and humanities, and finally, a cosmological bias favoring western science over indigenous knowledges. In recent years, scholars have noted changes in the IPCC, pointing at the inclusion of social science/humanities perspectives and a growing engagement with plural worldviews. Despite such forays, all aspects of knowledge production within the IPCC still echo the aspirations of nation states and quantitative models of attribution and detection. Climate knowledge production in the Himalayan region reflects this reality. In this essay, we focus on our personal experiences with local communities from the Himalayas and bring it in dialogue with our experiences with the IPCC knowledge production process. In doing so, we have two objectives: first, to highlight marginalized stories of climate-society relationships that challenge normative climate science/policy and, second, in light of these stories, suggest some salient considerations required to foreground justice and equity in futureengagements with the IPCC, which explores the production of democratic knowledge and how such knowledge can be wielded to achieve regional climate justice.

Competing perceptions of landscape in the Limi Valley: politics, ecology and pastoralism

“…These seemingly empty frontier spaces (Tsing 2005) in fact hold stories of a world-making nature (Blaser 2014: 54) or cosmologies that are at odds with a nation state's perspective of bordered national territory, a capitalist perspective of a resource frontier and a conservationist perspective of wilderness requiring protection (Peluso 1992, Cronon 1996, Neumann 1998, West 2006, Ybarra 2018, Gurung 2020. Authors have repeatedly warned against the imposition of external worldviews and agendas, even in well-intentioned initiatives such as environmental conservation or climate change mitigation projects (Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021). These agendas often share a view of pastoralism as disruptive and imply the need for pastoralists to settle (Fratkin 1997).…”

“…Yet it seems that none of these suggestions stemmed from needs expressed by the Limey with regard to the landscape, nor from their wish to conserve it, nor did they seem to take up local people's perceptions of and relationship to the landscape. Despite abundant literature evidencing the social and ecological shortcomings of top-down approaches to nature conservation (eg Peluso 1993, Neuman 1996, 1998, Spence 1999, Agarwal 2009, Nandigama 2009, Dowie 2009, Shah 2010, Ahlborg and Nightingale 2012, Cameron et al 2016, Thing 2019, Gurung 2020, Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021, history is bound to repeat itself if locals' ontologies, epistemologies and cosmologies do not shape initiatives aimed at fostering biodiversity. Stating the importance of 'traditional natural resource management systems' and their instrumental authority as being 'several centuries old' and therefore 'sustainable and cost-effective measures for biodiversity conservation in the country', seems to invite local perspectives insofar as they fit within a legal-political and cosmological framework deemed (the most) legitimate (Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021: 10).…”

“…3 With this paper, I follow up on some authors' (eg Agrawal 1995, Shah 2010, Asara et al 2015, Gurung 2020, Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021 concern about the absence of locals' own perspectives and interests within national and international environmental projects, such as conservation. Having their ecologies recognised, better understood and made an integral part of projects aimed at nurturing biodiversity is foundational to the success of initiatives aimed at curtailing the ecological and social crises affecting our globalised world.…”

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“…Although there is considerable literature on climate justice that emphasises its procedural, distributional, and intergenerational aspects, including questions of recognition (Schlosberg and Collins 2014;, the meaning, scope, and practical implications of climate justice remain contested. Emerging literature now points towards decolonising climate justice, arguing that global North-centric frameworks of justice can potentially erode other ways of (re)conceptualising climate (in)justice and how it is experienced and realised (Álvarez and Coolsaet 2020;Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021). To this end, several scholars have emphasised the need to pluralise climate justice, what it means, and how it is being realised in situated contexts (Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021;, thus promoting alternative concepts of justice, value, knowledge, nature, and culture (see Martin et al 2020).…”

“…Emerging literature now points towards decolonising climate justice, arguing that global North-centric frameworks of justice can potentially erode other ways of (re)conceptualising climate (in)justice and how it is experienced and realised (Álvarez and Coolsaet 2020;Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021). To this end, several scholars have emphasised the need to pluralise climate justice, what it means, and how it is being realised in situated contexts (Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021;, thus promoting alternative concepts of justice, value, knowledge, nature, and culture (see Martin et al 2020). For example, we show below how, for the Koli fishers in Mumbai, climate justice has influenced the petitions of the small-scale fishers who have documented the losses and damage suffered by them due to cyclones and extreme precipitation events, and are seeking compensation from the government.…”