Reimagining climate‐informed development: From “matters of fact” to “matters of care”

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the impasse climate-informed development practices currently find themselves in. This is represented by the fact that while "solutions" to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance capacities for adaptation and resilience are increasingly adopted around the world, we have enough evidence to suggest that strategies adopted "from above" have been unable to engender transformations towards more just and liveable futures. Situating the paper within recent calls for a "post-adaptation" turn in the field, I propose a generative critique of climate-informed development through the lens of care as a place from where to begin thinking and practicing development differently. The aim of this critique is not to discard or discredit development practices as necessarily tainted or flawed but to make them accountable to a whole set of concerns and cares going into their stories of success or failures. Throughout the paper, I therefore speculatively ask the reader to think though the possibilities that may be opened when we stop treating climate-informed development projects as neutral and undisputable "matters of fact," engaging with them instead as necessary and non-innocent "matters of care." Thinking through a tryptic notion of "matters of care," as at the same time a neglected doing necessary for the sustenance of life, an affective state, and an ethico-politics, I look at examples from semi-arid areas of India to give visibility to those practices, relations, and emotions of care that have been marginalised by mainstream development circles. Through this shift in perception, a deeper understanding of vulnerability as a state of shared fragility emerges, one that grounds an ethico-politics of climate-informed development to concrete circumstances and becomes the foundation upon which more inclusive practices can be built upon. K E Y W O R D S climate change, development, India, matters of care, post-adaptation, vulnerability | INTRODUCTIONA climate-smart world is within reach if we act now, act together, and act differently. (World Bank, 2010, p. 10) Standing, as we are, at this very moment in history, it seems impossible to disagree about the urgency to rethink our development trajectory towards one that is more sustainable and liveable for future generations. Yet, behind such a

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