Marginalized communities in India need empowering laws and policies to adapt sustainably to climate change, emphasizing well-being through small-scale collective sovereignty, gender justice, and the removal of other limiting factors. That is what Nairita Roy Chaudhuri argues on the basis of research in the rural and semi-arid regions of West Bengal and Odisha in eastern India. She will defend her PhD dissertation on Wednesday 11 December 2024 at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri explored how marginalized communities are adapting to the consequences of climate change such as water scarcity and droughts, and the role of law in supporting their sustainable adaptation. She conducted participatory interviews with 358 individuals from rural communities affected by climate change, from civil society organizations, and from local government in the rural and semi-arid regions of West Bengal and Odisha in eastern India.
The rural communities are still dealing with the lasting effects of colonialism and ongoing imperialism, she argues. They are often left out of decisions made in legal systems and international development frameworks such as the sustainable development goals, the Paris Agreement, and national adaptation plans, which tend to be designed from the top down without considering bottom-up perspectives.
Current situation
Chaudhuri’s findings show that these marginalized rural communities are unable to sustainably adapt. They only ’adjust’ or somehow survive with extremely scarce resources. Especially women and the elderly are forced to under-consume water and food. Many of them don’t have enough fuelwood to cook for their families due to dwindling forest resources, which can result in having to tolerate domestic abuse and violence. Some highly vulnerable landless and Dalit farmers are forced to commit suicide in an attempt to deal with prolonged drought, water scarcity, failed rice and cotton crops, income crises, and negative biodiversity impacts such as declining soil fertility.
Rural communities’ view of nature is fundamentally different from the neoclassical economic view, Chaudhuri explains: they see nature as fundamentally ’sufficient’ because their livelihood and everyday needs are limited. In contrast, the neoclassical economic view sees nature as inherently ’scarce’--a perspective that justifies resource allocation through free markets and promotes endless economic growth and environmental exploitation.
Removing limitations
Therefore, in order to be able to adapt sustainably, rural communities need to be able to sustain their limited needs by maintaining their small-scale livelihoods collectively, in ways that are both sovereign and gender-just, in order to reduce their dependence on local government authorities and private agricultural markets i.e. limit state-market hegemony. Rural sovereignty means collective control over traditional seeds, crop choices,Öland, shared rural community resources and forests, and traditional village institutions.
Lastly, policies to promote gender justice should dismantle or limit patriarchy by equitably addressing the systemic challenges and inequalities women from various social groups face. Chaudhuri’s findings show that women need more support in standing up against gender-based violence, caste discrimination, and the heavy burden of fetching and managing diminishing water and forest supplies due to their caregiving responsibilities.
If factors like neoclassical assumption of nature as scarce, gender injustice, and state-market hegemony are not limited or rectified, the situation of the rural communities will continue to worsen. Laws must enable their sustainable adaptation and disenable the factors that hinder the process.
PhD Defense
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri will defend her PhD dissertation on Wednesday 11 December 2024, 14.00 hrs CET in the Auditorium of Tilburg University. Title thesis: ’Enabling Limits: A Subaltern Theory of Transforming Boundary Struggles for Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation’. Supervisors: Prof. M.E.A. Goodwin, Prof. J.M. Verschuuren, Prof. P.S. Jones. The defense can also be followed via livestream .