Adaptation and Risk Analysis

Any development programme can foster climate adaptation and mitigation benefits; it must also, however, feature self-reflection and system assessments. The renowned ecologist C.S. Holling, who brought resilient thinking to the forefront of socio-ecological studies, asserted that systems must evolve while they build resilience. If the baseline system itself is fundamentally unjust and unsustainable, then evolving to a new system is preferable to belatedly attempting to add resilience.

The world is witnessing the increasing impacts of climate change at an alarming rate. Wildfires, floods, cyclones, and heatwaves have become uncomfortably common today. Current research in climate sciences tells us that even if we were to completely stop producing greenhouse gases today, we would still face the detrimental impacts of climate change due to historical emissions. Additionally, the impacts of climate change are not felt in isolation.

Cyclone Mocha — the first storm of 2023 in the North Indian Ocean — killed people, destroyed buildings, and caused economic losses in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Eastern India, and Sri Lanka. Barely a month later, Biparjoy — a rare June cyclone — formed over the Arabian Sea and struck Gujarat and other western states in India.

The first two articles of our ‘Under the Weather, On the Move’ blog series talked about the various considerations in conceptualising climate migration, and why migration is usually not the first adaptation strategy when facing a combination of climatic and non-climatic risks.

Human mobility in the context of environmental impacts has been gaining increasing attention. Our blog series ‘Under the Weather, On the Move’ seeks to demystify climate migration by exploring some of its key aspects, intersectional variations, and policy angles.

In this first article, we discuss how climate migration can be broadly defined.

World Environment Day reminds us—the contributing species to pollution on planet Earth—that the environment can be preserved through mindful actions and addressing harmful human activities.

In the context of this year's focus on combating plastic pollution, the United Nations Environment Programme has strongly emphasised the significant role of individuals in accelerating the shift to a plastic-free world.

It will be fair to say that many of us are looking forward to the monsoon season this year, eager to put behind us one of the hottest summers ever on record. With each passing year, India has been experiencing more and more instances of severe heatwaves, rendering these months more and more dreadful.

About a year ago, Bengaluru witnessed some of the worst floods in its history. Amidst many ad hoc measures, the state responded with excavators, removing encroachments on storm water drains (SWDs). It is clear now that none of the piecemeal solutions have worked. Rainfall over the last couple of weeks has seen flooding reoccur in the same parts of the city as the previous year. We often blame climate change for the mess we are in, and to some degree, this is justified. However, climate change always manifests through complex socio-ecological changes on the ground.

The relationship between climate change and migration is intricate. The first article in our ‘Under the Weather, On the Move’ series talked about the context and conditions within which people move or do not move. Establishing migration as a layered phenomenon, it further discussed how climate change impacts are diverse and closely linked to experiences of identity and sociocultural norms.

The world is grappling with intensifying climate change — temperatures are rising, weather patterns are changing, and extreme events and natural disasters are becoming frequent.
We are in the climate decisive decade, and we must act now.