Sustainability Conflicts in Coastal India: Hazards, Changing Climate and Development Discourses in the Sundarbans

255 Pages·2018·9.44 MB·English

by  Aditya Ghosh (auth.)

Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research
Aditya Ghosh
Sustainability
Confl icts in
Coastal India
Hazards, Changing Climate and
Development Discourses in the
Sundarbans
Advances in Asian Human-Environmental
Research
Series Editor
Prof. Marcus Nüsser, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Editorial Board
Prof. Eckart Ehlers, University of Bonn, Germany
Prof. Harjit Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Prof. Hermann Kreutzmann, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Prof. Ken Hewitt, Waterloo University, Canada
Prof. Urs Wiesmann, University of Bern, Switzerland
Prof. Sarah J. Halvorson, University of Montana, USA
Dr. Daanish Mustafa, King’s College, London, UK
Aims and Scope
The series aims at fostering the discussion on the complex relationships between
physical landscapes, natural resources, and their modification by human land use in
various environments of Asia. It is widely acknowledged that human-environment
interactions become increasingly important in area studies and development
research, taking into account regional differences as well as bio-physical, socio-
economic and cultural particularities.
The book series seeks to explore theoretic and conceptual reflection on dynamic
human-environment systems applying advanced methodology and innovative
research perspectives. The main themes of the series cover urban and rural land-
scapes in Asia. Examples include topics such as land and forest degradation, gla-
ciers in Asia, mountain environments, dams in Asia, medical geography, vulnerability
and mitigation strategies, natural hazards and risk management concepts, environ-
mental change, impacts studies and consequences for local communities. The rele-
vant themes of the series are mainly focused on geographical research perspectives
of area studies, however there is scope for interdisciplinary contributions.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8560
Aditya Ghosh
Sustainability Conflicts
in Coastal India
Hazards, Changing Climate and Development
Discourses in the Sundarbans
Aditya Ghosh
Institute of Ethics and Transdisciplinary
Sustainability Research
Leuphana University of Lüneburg
Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
ISSN 1879-7180 ISSN 1879-7199 (electronic)
Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research
ISBN 978-3-319-63891-1 ISBN 978-3-319-63892-8 (eBook)
DOI/10.1007/978-3-319-63892-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950065
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Cover illustration: Nomads near Nanga Parbat, 1995. Copyright © Marcus Nüsser (used with permission)
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To Ma and Baba, for their relentless
sacrifices and inspiration that made it
possible.
Foreword
The coastal regions of South Asia are exposed to rising sea levels and recurring
environmental hazards such as floods, cyclones, high soil erosion and land subsid-
ence. These regions in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are
also variously characterised by high population densities, endangered biodiversity,
sprawling urbanisation, acute poverty and poor governance – increasing the precari-
ousness of future development. The study focuses on the Sundarbans, spread
across the delta formed by the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, shared between
India and Bangladesh. The area is known as a globally important biodiversity
hotspot with the world’s largest mangrove forest that is one of the last remaining
habitats of the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger; it is also home for five million peo-
ple. Most of these coastal inhabitants subsist on local natural resources and con-
stantly adapt their livelihood strategies to the adverse effects of climate change and
natural hazards.
Taking the approach of a politicised environment, the author conceptualises the
conflict-ridden negotiations between global environmental protection agendas
(UNESCO World Heritage, Ramsar) and local people in a highly dynamic and frag-
ile environment. Based on sound theoretical foundations and detailed empirical
findings, Aditya Ghosh delivers an important contribution on the socioecological
problems of the Indian Sundarbans. As someone who has had more than 15 years’
of regional interest, both as a journalist and an academic, he provides a deeper and
more nuanced insight into the precarious nature of the region and its people. This
book contributes to a better understanding of the entangled constellation of climatic
and environmental dynamics together with the diverse socioeconomic aspirations
and political power asymmetries of the stakeholders in the Sundarbans. The book
addresses these issues through three steps. Firstly, the author advances our under-
standing of climatic hazards, with the revelation that short-term and small-sized
disasters are more devastating than normally assumed – thus countering the estab-
lished institutional definitions of disasters. Secondly, he reveals how different gov-
ernance regimes and development actors frame the discourse about hazards,
sustainability, ecosystem conservation and climate change in the region. Finally, he
unravels the global to local-level power asymmetries evident in the discourse on
vii
viii Foreword
climate change adaptation and sustainable development. He shows how such discur-
sive power struggles and hegemonies displace a locally nuanced discourse with
policies in favour of a globally consensual one.
This book constitutes essential reading for anyone who studies socioecological
problems of the coastal areas of South Asia in general and the Sundarbans in par-
ticular from a post-colonial perspective of regional development processes within
the context of climate change.
Heidelberg, Germany Marcus Nüsser
February 2017
Preface
This book is an abridged and modified version of my PhD thesis, which I completed
in December 2016 at the South Asia Institute (SAI), University of Heidelberg. The
research was funded by DAAD, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst –
the German Academic Exchange Service. SAI provided a perfectly interdisciplinary
atmosphere and rare academic freedom for this research.
It was, however, a moral, ethical and philosophical struggle to produce a Southern
perspective of the Western constructs of sustainability and climate change adapta-
tion. This seemed important as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were
announced by the United Nations in 2016, to replace the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs). I asked the villagers in the Sundarbans, if ‘sustainability’ made any
sense to them. It was difficult to explain in the first place, as it did not have any
equivalent term in the local language, Bengali. The subjectivities and variegated
sense-making made me wonder how even local managers would define and imple-
ment these objectives. At the same time, I learned how communities managed their
ecologies through cultural negotiations and generational knowledge, what was con-
sidered a hazard and why, how conflicts between multiple realities revealed differ-
ent hegemonies at work. Legitimising diverse epistemologies, uncovering
rationalities and subjectivities seemed crucial in order to construct counter- narratives
to the global rhetoric of sustainable development goals. The local struggles ema-
nated from high levels of poverty, livelihood insecurities, lack of access to elemen-
tary healthcare, misgovernance and recurrent hazards. These daily hazards were not
only environmental ones such as flooding, erosion and storms but also snakebites,
tiger attacks and frequent boat capsizes.
To avoid ‘epistemic violence’, shifting the goalposts seemed important. My ethi-
cal dilemma, however, was associated with my position of privilege at a Western
institution from where I could sympathise but hardly ally with these people or speak
for them. Obligation to ‘anonymous’ research further deepened the likelihood of
subjectification and objectification of the people from whom I sourced my knowl-
edge. To minimise condescending truth claims that often implicate the post-colonial
Other, I decided to employ case studies, storylines of people using their ‘actual’
names and places. Consent was obtained in each case. Adding faces to the narrative
ix
x Preface
and arguments – not as ethnic posters or advertisements of research success but to
depict agents in their natural settings – helps bolster the sense of place and under-
standing of the region in the spirit of visual anthropology. Achieving total objectiv-
ity, however, is a utopia, because all research is guided by certain viewpoints, which
involve subjectivity, because in post-constructivism, facts are co-constructed and
knowledge is subjective.
Distinctions between academic texts and other forms of writing are getting
increasingly obfuscated, as a welcome development. Authors, humanists, social and
natural scientists are converging at one point, evident from growing popularity of
streams such as environmental humanities. Amitav Ghosh, a noted author and a
trained anthropologist from Oxford University, UK, puts it nicely: ‘If nature is to be
re-imagined in such a way as to restore the human presence within it – not as preda-
tor but partner – then this too must first be told as a story’ (quoted in White 2013:4–
5). I also believe that the research on human-environment relations needs to remain
true to its commitment to both the humans and non-humans. Marx had proclaimed
in his Thesis on Feurbach that ‘The question of whether objective truth can be
attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question’.
The objective of the exercise is to inform action, to remain embedded into reconfig-
uring current and future applications instead of producing knowledge for posterity.
This work attempts to remain true to both its commitments. It experiments with a
language, structure and narrative that is a hybrid between academics and fiction. At
the same time, it also tries to theorise practices and evolve theories that can be prac-
tised – globally and locally.
Certain parts of this work have been presented in seminars, apart from contribut-
ing to academic and policy documents. Connections between biodiversity conserva-
tion and human security were presented at the Dimensions of Political Ecology
conference (Kentucky 2017), University of Kentucky, USA. Findings on risk pro-
duction, governmentality and everyday disasters were presented at the Anthropology,
Weather and Climate Change conference (London 2016), Royal Anthropoligical
Society, The British Museum. Everyday disasters, in the wake of post-Hyago
UNISDR protocol, was selected as a topic of paper at the UNFCCC’s scientific ses-
sion titled Our Common Future under Climate Change (Paris 2015). The political
ecology perspective on climate change adaptation was presented at the STEPS
Centre, IDS Summer School, University of Sussex (Brighton 2014). The water gov-
ernance regime in the Sundarbans and its role in risk production were presented at
the conference titled Epistemologies of Water in Asia (Germany 2014), Cluster of
Excellence, University of Heidelberg. Climate change adaptation in the Indian
Sundarbans and the role of disaster risk reduction were presented at the King’s
College, UCL (London 2014), and at the DEEM Workshop, University of Reading,
UK. Analysis of a cyclone and its impact on the Indian Sundarbans constituted a
chapter in a background paper prepared for UNISDR’s 2015 Global Assessment
Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. An article titled “The Indian Sundarban
Mangrove Forests: History, Utilization, Conservation Strategies and Local
Perception” by Ghosh et al. (2015) was published in Diversity, (7, 149–169;
doi:10.3390/d7020149).