Content uploaded by Nairita Roy Chaudhuri
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Nairita Roy Chaudhuri on Jul 06, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
34 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
Exploring Sustainable Degrowth-Based Adaptation to Climate
Change-Aggravated Water Scarcity in Parts of Rural India: A
Gender Relations Approach
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri
Department of Public Law & Governance, Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, Netherlands.
1 INTRODUCTION
Approximately four billion people comprising around 71%
of the world population, live under severe water-scarce con-
ditions at least one month in a year, of which one billion live
in India (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016).Unchecked over-ex-
traction has increased the demand for groundwater in India
beyond its availability, leading to water stress. Current stress
on surface and groundwater resources is being compound-
ed by climate change, causing increased frequency, intensi-
ty, and geographical coverage of droughts in India (World
Bank 2008, Panda 2010, IPCC 2014, Brown et al. 2007).
The IPCC (2014), report says that an “increase in the number
of monsoon break days and the decline in the number of
monsoon depressions are consistent with the overall de-
crease in seasonal mean rainfall;” thus, increasing the risk
of droughts.
wH2O: The Journal of Gender and Water REVIEW
ABSTRACT
This article reviews the theoretical concept of ‘sustainable adaptation’ to climate
change and water scarcity using a gender-relations approach by answering the
following questions: i) What is a sustainable adaptation to climate change? ii)
Based on a literature review, how does gender interact with climate change ad-
aptation to water scarcity and droughts in rural India? (iii) How do the concepts
of sustainable adaptation, degrowth, and gender relations interact on the ground,
pertaining to water justice?
The paper argues that climate change adaptation and development goals can
harmonize only if they rectify root causes of vulnerabilities. For adaptation ac-
tions to yield sustainable outcomes, they need to be embedded in a just degrowth
politics that transforms unequal power relations, including gender relations with
water. In India, degrowth is about ecological, economic, and social justice that
calls for transformation of the economy. This transformation looks into the life-
cycle of goods - how goods are produced, composed, assembled, distributed,
consumed, and regenerated today; further degrowth strategy explores alternate,
just, non-extractive, decolonial, and democratically led trajectories that sustain
the web of life. This paper discusses ve interrelated principles of sustainable
degrowth-based adaptation that center on community-based notions of water
and gender justice.
KEY WORDS
sustainable adaptation, degrowth, climate
change adaptation, gender, water, water
scarcity drought, water, India, gender
equity
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri:
N.RoyChaudhuri@tilburguniversity.edu
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1 35
In India, the agricultural sector largely depends on natural
rainfall (precipitation, river runoff, and groundwater) for
farming practices (Roy Chaudhuri, 2021). Water secures
livelihood for rural households, whose daily food security
depends on production from their own or off-farm sources
(Hatai and Sen n.d., Wu et al. 2008). Water insecure con-
ditions like droughts and scarcity can disrupt food securi-
ty, increase malnutrition, and the risk of infectious diseases
(IPCC 2014b; Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016). The impacts
of climate catastrophe will disproportionately affect the so-
cially, economically, culturally, politically, and institutional-
ly marginalized people due to their “heightened vulnerabili-
ty” (IPCC 2014c,).
Vulnerability is the “likelihood of injury, death, loss, dis-
ruption of livelihoods or harm resulting from social changes
such as conict or economic restructuring” (S. H. Eriksen
& O’brien, 2007).Vulnerability is typically intertwined
with poverty, structural & relational disadvantages, and
natural hazards (Tanner & Mitchell, 2009). Social and
environmen-tal processes increase risks and affect
vulnerability because they limit or stimulate adaptive
capacities. Poor access to safety mechanisms and
financial services increases expo-sure to deprivation and
poverty. It is relational and political because the relative
security and power of some are directly linked to others’
vulnerabilities and disempowerment that is reproduced
over time.
From a political ecology perspective, water governance in
India is a part of broader processes of industrialization, eco-
nomic growth, and agricultural modernization stimulated
through the integration of Southern economies into the cap-
italist and neoliberal global economy (Roth et al.,
2018,).1 These factors make historically marginalized
communities like small farmers, agricultural laborers, and
pastoralists in rural areas vulnerable to climate change.
Their livelihoods directly depend on natural resources, and
any minor changes in environmental conditions will
expose them to climate risks (IPCC, 2014a).
Post-independence, India underwent a “groundwater revolu-
tion” that was anchored upon “scientific rationalism” to re-
al-locate water towards urbanization and agricultural
growth through the construction of dams, canals,
reservoirs, and water pumps (Taylor, 2017). In addition,
agricultural liberalization since the 1990s subsidized
electricity for water extraction, leading to a proliferation of
over two million private pumps and wells in 60% of India’s
irrigated water (Roth et al., 2018; Taylor, 2017).This
contributed to inequity among farmers because only those
with land rights and who could afford private pumps and
wells could access groundwater for agricultural purposes,
leaving out marginal farmers.
1 The global South is responsible for exporting “raw materials and light manufactures” through “unequal exchange” for meeting 50% of the consumption needs in the global North at the cost
of ecosystem degradation in the South (Hickel, 2020, p. 5; Hickel et al., 2021). On virtual water, around 11% of non-renewable groundwater used for irrigation is integrated in international
food trade of which two-thirds are exported from Pakistan, USA and India. India has the highest fraction by volume of groundwater that is “abstracted for irrigation use in excess of the
natural recharge rate and irrigation return ow for producing wheat and rice” (Dalin et al., 2017, p. 701). While most of India’s over-abstracted groundwater is used towards domestic food
consumption, 4% of such water is used for exporting rice and cotton. India is still the third largest exporter of over-abstracted water.
2 Hegemonic masculinity ideologizes gender binaries between socially constructed masculinity and femininity by perpetuating the logic of domination/mastery (over nature and women); and
reinforcing & prioritizing the value of masculinity over femininity (Zwarteveen, 2008, p. 113, 126).
Water meant for irrigation use has since been allocated for
productive uses by industries and private companies for elite
consumption, at the expense of water for use by smallholder
farmers working in the agricultural sector & the urban poor
(Roth et al., 2018). The groundwater revolution also
converged with the green revolution that encouraged
agricultural productivity and intensification. The usage of
high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, chemical fertilizers and
pesticides arguably changed cropping patterns. Subsistence
and food crops were replaced by commercial and water-
intensive ones. All of the above have immense consequences
on soil fertility and water quality/availability (Taylor, 2017,
Chapter 7). Agricultural productivity, i.e., yield per
hectare, increased fourfold since the green revolution in
the 1970s, all with the aid of pumping groundwater
(Chattopadhyay, 2021). The green revolution resulted in
increased commercialization of and dispute over water
and other resources. This further led to inequity between
the “water-rich and the water-poor” (Roth et al., 2018)
farming communities across gender, class, caste, tribe, and
regions. This raises concerns about climate injustice
because farming communities that contribute the least to the
greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) will suffer the
consequences of water injustice even more.
However, water injustice cannot fully explain the
fundamental problem without highlighting gender
injustice in water and climate change. In India, literature
on traditional or modern water governance is primarily
written in heteronormative and gender-binary (men/
women) language. For example, irrigation policies and
interventions are also structured in binary terms that
reinforce the ‘masculine hegemony’2 by reducing water to
a “technocentric” subject and constraining women’s
meaningful participation & perspectives in every level of
decision-making on water projects and policies (Kulkarni,
2016, p. 87).
In this paper, I admittedly speak in such a language by
limiting analyses to the literature offered thus far. Taking
my cue from feminist scholarship, water management
organizations are hegemonically ‘masculine’ because (i)
they invisibilize women’s labor (or value it less); (ii)
provide less scope for women to meaningfully participate
and take decisions in water user associations and other
local institutions; or (iii) exclude non-positivist
epistemologies of making sense of water & nature
(Krishna & Kulkarni, 2018; Kulkarni, 2016; Paulson &
Boose, 2019; Zwarteveen, 2008). Inequitable spatial
distribution of water raises gender concerns because only
around 11-12% of women own land (Kulkarni, 2016). An
estimated 45 percent of farmers in India’s agricultural
sector are women. However, the proportion is debatable-
36 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
sometimes going above 63 percent because women
farmers’ labor largely remains unrecognized, under-
reported and therefore, invisible (Ghosh & Ghosh, 2014;
OXFAM, 2013b). Gendered norms often nudge women
and girls with the responsibility to fetch water (Figure
1), wherein each round trip to the nearest source of fresh
water and back home takes around 41 minutes (Tandon,
2007; Udmale et al., 2015; Vidyasagar, 2007). Moreover,
more than one trip may be required to fulfill household
needs.
Figure 1: A rural woman fetching water in rural Odisha, India (Picture by
author)
It is reported that (Oxfam, 2013b; Tandon, 2007), climate
change impacts will cause women to travel farther to fetch
water. Apart from walking for water, women will have to
accomplish farming activities such as producing seedlings,
sowing (Figure 2), weeding, transplanting, threshing and har-
vesting. Women are also responsible for care or reproductive
work like fuelwood collection, food preparation, domestic
chores, and taking care of children and the elderly.3 There-
fore, vulnerabilities must be addressed to enable communi-
ties to adapt smoothly.
Gender and socio-economic inequities interlock and intersect
to shape structural, unique, and multi-layered vulnerabili-
ties that must be addressed to enable all genders to adapt to
climate change. A gender-neutral/blind approach to adapta-
tion will not work if gender and cultural norms that perpetu-
ate unequal power relations among and within female, male
and other groups are not considered.
3 Read more about the link between gender and “multiple uses of water” in rural India in order to understand how women’s priority for meeting reproductive chores is inuenced by avail-
ability of domestic water from irrigation canals in (Kulkarni, 2016, p. 82).
Figure 2: Illustration of women farmers sowing in rice farm; Picture by
Nandalal Sarkar from Pixabay
In this context, I aim to carve out gender just pathways for
promoting sustainable climate change adaptation to water
scarcity and droughts. The goal is to address the root causes
of vulnerabilities towards water justice for female, male and
other groups in times of climate change.
2 METHODS
This paper uses a literature review approach to critically
explore the concept of sustainable climate change adaptation
to water scarcity and droughts and identify the gender
barriers that interfere with sustainable adaptation processes
& actions among small and marginal farmers in rural India.
First, I review the concept of sustainable adaptation to
climate change. I use a degrowth approach (that suits India’s
post-colonial, local & multicultural contexts) to deconstruct
the concept of sustainable development (SD).The aim is to
offer a just development paradigm into which adaptation
strategies may be incorporated towards water and gender
justice for structurally vulnerable communities. The concept
of degrowth presents an opportunity for post colonial South-
ern economies to decolonize themselves from the shackles of
material extractivism, “imperial forms of appropriation” &
neoliberal capitalist growth while simultaneously promoting
local “sovereignty, self- sufciency, and human well-being”
(Hickel, 2020, pp. 5–6, 2021; Hickel et al., 2021). Therefore,
degrowth offers a transformational vision of SD, especially
in the context of the Anthropocene, a period in Earth’s history
in which human activities are driving ecosystem destruction
at a planetary scale.
Second, I (partially) review literature from nine purposively
chosen case studies in the southern, western, northern, and
eastern parts of India published between 2013-2019, based
on the criteria that the authors therein engaged with climate
change adaptation to water scarcity through an in-depth
gender angle. Here, I aim to identify the nature of gendered
vulnerabilities and subjectivities in relation to water.
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1 37
Third, I advance five interrelated elements of sustainable
degrowth-based adaptation that are gender just i.e., rectify
gender inequal power relations and promote fairness, equali-
ty & participation among female, male and other sexes, rela-
tive to multiple socio-economic and ecological contexts.
3 WHAT IS A SUSTAINABLE
ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE?
3.1 Adaptation as technological and supercial
xes
Adaptation is a “process of adjustment to actual or expected
climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks
to moderate or avoid harm, or utilize benecial opportuni-
ties. In some natural systems, human intervention may facil-
itate adjustment to expected climate and its effects” (IPCC,
2014a). This apolitical denition of adaptation, albeit vital,
is only based on modeling future climate changes and their
impacts on the biophysical environment. Such top-down
and technology-based adaptation approaches are usually
embedded in business-as-usual politics, without addressing
the qualitative (such as oppressive power inequalities, psy-
chological & emotional factors, and social norms) sources
of vulnerability in post-colonial countries (Klein et al.,
2007). Moreover, we are headed to a global mean tempera-
ture rise of 3°C this century in the business-as-usual scenar-
io (UNEP, 2020).
The relationship between gender and water within the dis-
course of SD gained global attention by way of the 1992 Inter-
national Conference on Water and Environment that adopted
the ‘Dublin statement on water and SD’. The statement not
only recognized water as a scarce economic good but also
linked women’s central role in safeguarding it (Krishna &
Kulkarni, 2018). The importance of embedding adaptation
(to water scarcity in this case) actions into SD arose when
empirical studies showed that adaptation measures did not
necessarily yield socially & environmentally just outcomes
or were maladaptive (S. H. Eriksen & O’brien, 2007; Eriksen
et al., 2011).
However, the fundamental challenge in development policies
is in the nature of SD. Neither do adaptation actions automat-
ically reduce poverty, nor do poverty alleviation measures
automatically enable communities to adapt to climate change
aggravated water scarcity. This is because poverty allevia-
tion and adaptation measures are coopted into conventional
SD goals (SDGs) that center endless economic growth (ex-
pressed in ‘Gross Domestic Product’ or GDP) as an end in
itself and reduce deprivation to economic parameters only.
The GDP only measures the “market value of the nal goods
and services that are produced in an economy in a period, but
it does not measure the way in which it is produced”, thereby
dangerously overlooking nature’s ‘invisible’,‘silent’ and
4 On the stages of global capitalism, see (Bhambra, 2020).
‘mobile’ properties that sustain life on this planet (Dasgup-
ta, 2016, 2021). In her paper, Calzadilla (2021) shows how
populist governments misuse ‘territorial sovereignty’ and the
SDG 8 on economic growth to continue committing climate
injustices (deforestation, local water pollution, eviction of
rural people, and others) within national borders.
Any adaptation and community-based development projects
integrated with SDGs will, therefore, very likely commod-
itize women’s empowerment and water to serve the inter-
ests of neoliberal states and patriarchy (Krishna & Kulkarni,
2018; O’Reilly, 2006). Concerns are being raised that many
adaptation plans fail because they are ‘retrotted’ into or ‘re-
branded’ as development agendas (Eriksen et al., 2021). Ad-
aptation and development can synchronize only if they have
the same goals of dismantling root causes of vulnerabilities.
Otherwise, economic growth-centered SD will continue to
produce inequitable and ecologically destructive outcomes
and vulnerabilities which would be aggravated by climate
change. Additionally, such adaptation outcomes, in turn
elevate pre-existing inequities, unequal power relations, eco-
logical fractures, and vulnerabilities. The following section
discusses an alternate politics towards just adaptation that is
radically beyond “mere adjustment of current practices and
development paths” (Eriksen et al., 2011).
3.2 Sustainable adaptation as transformative
politics
The concept of sustainable adaptation was theorized to
address: i) linkages between vulnerability and poverty
(example, adaptive actions reducing income poverty may
not necessarily address the agency of women in developing
countries); ii) spatial and temporal consequences of adaptive
actions (example, consequences of adaptation actions bene-
ting a particular sector, group or both at the cost of stability/
security of another sector/group/both); and iii) feedbacks and
linkages between local and global processes over space and
time, e.g. adaptation actions impacting water quality in one
location may have negative feedbacks elsewhere (Eriksen et
al., 2011).
Given that vulnerability is intertwined with poverty, structur-
al and relational disadvantages, sustainable adaptation looks
into “transforming power relations rather than addressing
their symptoms” towards long-term social change (Taylor,
2013a). Moreover, since climate change is also an anthro-
pogenic phenomenon, there is a need to re-politicize capi-
talism (neoliberal, neoclassical, neoliberalism, authoritarian
populism, and all facets of the “colonial global economy”
4
),
and industrialism. Endless growth requires “endless primary
resources and increases the pressure on a nite planet” while
hardly addressing distributional justice, anthropocentrism
and hegemonic masculinity that led us to the Anthropocene
in the rst place (Calzadilla, 2021; Lélé, 1991; Harris, 2000;
Kennet, 2006; van Aalst, Cannon, & Burton, 2008; French,
2018). In this line of thinking, sustainable adaptation is a
38 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
“broader mindfulness” (Mcneeley, 2012) of extractive and
hegemonic processes towards transformative politics that
addresses unequal power relations (Wissman-Weber &
Levy, 2018).
3.3 Water justice for sustainable adaptation
Towards a sustainable climate change adaptation to water
scarcity and droughts, we need a non-universal framework
of ‘water justice’ that sits at the intersection of economic
and political power that shapes decisions about: i) unequal
distribution of water (giving rise to unequally distributed
benefits and burdens); ii) unequal access to and control over
water; and iii) contested water rights, knowledge, and culture
(Boelens et al.2021). Water justice should operate along with
principles of “fairness, equity, participation” (Sultana, 2018,
p. 487), sustainability and democracy (Roth et al., 2018, p.
47). It should also deviate from the nature/human binary that
privileges anthropocentrism and mastery over non-human
nature. Finally, it should be relational, context specific, and
situated. It is non-universal in that the notion of justice is
based on plural, lived, and everyday realities, which are con-
stituted through dynamic social and customary practices.
3.4 Can degrowth offer a pedestal for sustainable
adaptation?
Degrowth is a movement that arose from dissatisfaction
with linear progress, modern and imperialistic modes of
production, and lifestyle because of its negative planetary
consequences. Some of these negative consequences include
species extinction, biodiversity loss, climate change, extreme
global inequality, the expulsion of people from their tradi-
tional lands & livelihoods due to extractive urbanization,
mining (of iron ore, bauxite, coal, chromite), diversion of
water resources through dam constructions, and many others
(D’Alisa Giacomo, Demaria Federico, & Kallis Giorgios,
2014; Lang, 2017; Shrivastava & Kothari, 2014). These
planetary crises raise questions about the assumptions we
took for granted that sustain life on this planet.
Degrowth is ‘primarily’5 aimed at scaling down material
and energy ‘throughput’6 in high-income countries.
However, it does not apply to societies that are “not
characterized by excess resource and energy use” (Hickel,
2020, p. 5). At a global scale, degrowth liberates Southern
economies from offering cheap exports and labor to the
global North. Degrowth (not economic contraction/
recession) in the global South calls for ecological,
economic, and social justice transforming the economy in
how goods are produced, composed, assembled, distributed,
consumed, and regenerated today.
5 Quoted because, “the North is responsible for 92% of global CO2 emissions in excess of the safe planetary boundary”; and relies on a “large net appropriation of resources from the rest of
the world (equivalent to 50% of their total consumption)”. See (Hickel, 2020, p. 5).
6 Throughput is the ow of energy and materials throughout a given system.
7 This is also framed as ‘Ecological Swaraj’ or Radical Ecological Democracy based on M.K. Gandhi’s notion of Swaraj with respect to decolonizing India. See (Kothari, 2014; Kothari et
al., 2014; Kothari & Joy, 2017; Shrivastava & Kothari, 2014).
8 Care ethic: i) dismantles human chauvinism & hegemonic masculinity, and fosters the symbiosis of human and non-human “life that makes up the planet” (Grzybowski, 2019, p. 103); ii) is
based on relational and regenerative logics wherein the only thing rational is the interconnectedness and circularity in the “ecological processes” (Demaria Federico, 2019, p. xxxii); and ii)
allows sharing earth’s resources and women’s additional reproductive labor with men towards women’s liberation.
The transformation mentioned earlier is possible by
exploring alternate, equitable, non-extractive,
decolonial, and democratically led trajectories
that sustain the web of life (Vincent, 2021). At sub-
national scales, degrowth aims to build anti-
exploitative economies based on sovereignty,self-
reliance7, self-sufficiency, and well-being of those living
in the margins (Hickel, 2020). This can take effect
through a radical redistribution of power & wealth
and letting the marginalized take control of the
conditions that make their lives sustainable through a
facilitative role for the state (Kothari, 2014; Kothari,
Demaria, & Acosta, 2014). It is also an invitation to
decolonize the economic growth imaginary by going
back to history and learning from past civilizations in the
global South that were destroyed, and considered ‘infe-
rior’ or ‘primitive’ through colonization/colonial narratives.
However, learnings from the past must not contradict
values of ‘care’8, diversity within solidarity,
the commons, feminism, non-violence, conviviality and
open (cultural & lin-guistic exchange)
relocalization (of economies, production and
exchange). Degrowth in the South is not an uncritical
revisitation to the past, or unfair burdening of low
impact societies but a call for plural notions of justice
and a good life.
Economic growth has often been used in the global South to
justify rising inequalities & consumption among the
margins and elites in rural and urban areas (Liegey, 2021;
Roy Chaudhuri, 2021). India, with its 600,000 villages is
perhaps best placed to remedy the centuries old imbalance
between cities and villages towards an ecological way of
life that does not physically and psychologically devour
over village resources (Shrivastava & Kothari, 2014).
Degrowth may offer a just development paradigm that
can transform unequal power relations that produce
multidimensional vulnerabilities. This strategy enables just
adaptation actions to flourish in a planet because resources
cannot regenerate and keep up with the increasing rate of
capitalist extraction & waste generation. However, before
envisioning the possibility of degrowth having the
potential to transform gender relations, it is essential to
identify adaptation actions presently used by the farming
communities across India. It is also vital to determine the
nature of gendered vulnerabilities and subjectivities in
relation to water as discussed in the next section. Based on a
literature review, how does gender interact with
climate change adaptation to water scarcity and droughts
in rural India?
39
4 HOW DOES GENDER
INTERACT WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
ADAPTATION TO WATER SCARCITY
AND DROUGHTS IN RURAL INDIA?
This section reviews adaptation strategies (along with ve
themes) undertaken by farming communities and their un-
derlying barriers from nine published case studies pan India
on gender-based climate change adaptation to water scarcity
and droughts. Then, the strategies focusing on gender rela-
tions and vulnerabilities are analyzed.
4.1 Access to tangible (land, local institutions)
and intangible (rights, social networks, collective
action) assets
Gender is a crucial category of inquiry in the Indian context
because of the patriarchal pattern of access and ownership to
resources such as land, water, labor, social capital, and net-
works (Aryal, Farnworth, Khurana, Ray, & Sapkota, n.d.).
In several rural societies in India, women are not considered
as ‘farmers’ despite their high time contribution in
agricultural activities, including plantation of seeds,
transplantation of rice, and weeding, in contrast with men
who are generally involved in the plowing of land (Figure
3) using oxen and tractors (Aryal et al., n.d.; J. Ghosh,
2016; Raney T. et al., 2011; Rao, 2011). This is in
addition to doing non-economic and therefore unpaid care
activities within (domestic work) and for (fetching water
and fuelwood) households – also referred as women’s
‘double burden’ (Elson, 1990; J. Ghosh, 2016).
Furthermore, legal provisions allowing equal inheritance
rights for women and men, do not translate into women
practically acquiring land because of cultural norms, and
lack of legal awareness. Lack of formal land ownership
disables women from accessing agricultural implements. On
the other hand, legal ownership of land does not translate into
decision-making power over its use due to community norms
(Kelkar Govind, 2013). A mixed-method study (Xenarios
et al., 2017) conducted among rice farmers in drought-prone
villages in Southern India revealed that despite women and
men having equal legal rights to inherit land from their
parents in the state of Andhra Pradesh, women are rarely
allowed to inherit and manage their own housing property
and agricultural land. Non-recognition of women as actual
landowners excludes them from accessing agricultural
extension offices, water user associations, financial credit
agencies, and other schemes, which may help them
improve farming practices (Xenarios et al., 2017; Singh,
2019).
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
Figure 3: A picture of a man plowing land with the help of ox in rural
Odisha (picture by author)
However, access to informal and formal village institutions
such as women’s self-help groups and agricultural associa-
tions helped them raise their revenues; and access informa-
tion on social & professional issues and cropping decisions
(Xenarios et al., 2017). Both men and women agreed that
these institutions helped them make better decisions on live-
stock and cropping patterns that are better aligned with local
weather conditions. For example, in the case of extended
drought, farmers either opt for drought-resistant crops, shift
to livestock activities or both (Xenarios et al., 2017). Such
decisions are helpful in determining adaptation strategies
because it is essential that the crops suit local ecosystems
and climatic conditions with institutional support.
4.2 Income & food insecurities and the secure/
insecure nature of crisis help
Climate variability in the form of unreliable water supply
during droughts is concerning to both women and men.
In a study, the participants blamed the over-abstraction of
water in the upper streams and the canal systems as a cause
of insufcient water downstream (Xenarios et al., 2017).
Tubewell and electric pump owners expressed hardships
due to over-abstraction and frequent power cuts, respec-
tively. Meanwhile, small and marginal male farmers were
worried about employment security and indebtedness from
prior loans. In contrast, female farmers were worried about
family members’ food security. Lending practices were gen-
dered e.g. men borrowed from informal moneylenders while
women took nancial help from extended family members.
Similarly, in another study male farmers showed willing-
ness to take loans at very high interest rates from local mon-
ey lenders to dig bore wells, the risks of which came at the
40 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
cost of high dowry-demands from women (to repay loans);
and wives repaying debts through domestic work, sexual ex-
ploitation, and among others (Rao et al., 2019).
Economic distress is noticeable in the rising number of sui-
cides in the state of Andhra Pradesh because of their “expo-
sure to irrevocable debts” (Xenarios et al., 2017). Further,
women highlighted increased domestic violence stemming
from men’s depression from economic losses (Xenarios et
al., 2017). Extreme drought conditions generate new insecu-
rities in which male farmers fail to repay their loans, leading
to conscation of their household and farm assets. As the
authors argue, such unsustainable lending practices are
bound to aggravate during extreme weather conditions, thus
exerting additional pressures on household gender relations
(Xenarios et al., 2017). In terms of solutions to economic
losses, men prefer loan-waiver during drought conditions.
4.3 When migration brings inter and intra-
generational risks and opportunities for women,
men, and children
Migration comes with a host of new livelihood opportunities
and risks, which may contribute to intra-generational conict
with host communities and inter-generational consequences
on the well-being of children. However, the gendered nature
of this coping strategy highlights risks, which are unique to
both women and men. Migration is primarily of male pop-
ulation, leaving behind poor women in conditions such as
increased workload, loss of support, limited resources, and
enhanced vulnerability (Rao et al., 2019). This trend was also
observed in a study conducted in the state of Bihar, which
showed short-term distress migration as a survival strategy
to enhance households’ income prole and further invest
in climate-resilient strategies (Bhatta, Aggarwal, Poudel, &
Belgrave, 2015). Households that use migration as a surviv-
al strategy are poor and have subsistence-oriented farming
with/without marginal farmlands undergoing frequent food
decit months in a year (Bhatta et al., 2015).
Men in India migrate to nearby towns/cities to take up
low-moderate-no skilled jobs (Singh, 2019). They often
move to precarious situations in urban areas where they
expose themselves to new forms of risks arising from
moving into a temporary/illegal house, entering into informal
and dangerous jobs, lacking social networks, illnesses, psy-
chological “pressure to perform”, and among others (Singh,
2019). Men’s preference in diversifying their income through
renting out land or migrating out was observed in another
study conducted in the state of Bihar (Ravera, Martín-López,
Pascual, & Drucker, 2016). While relatively well-off women
supported migration as an income diversication strategy,
poorer women perceive them as undesirable because it in-
creases their agricultural workload in addition to their care-
giving role. Migration may lead to a “multi-local” and gen-
dered framing of households (Figure 4) where members live
and operate across different geographies contributing to a
range of livelihood activities (Singh, 2019).
9 Such as employing HYV seeds, chemical fertilizers, and multiple cropping cycles in a year.
Figure 4: Depiction of everyday gendered activities; a woman washing
dishes in Tamil Nadu, India (Photo by Shruti Parthasarathy from
Unsplash)
Male out-migration during extreme events tends to increase
women’s workload, especially the ones who are pregnant and
lactating. When men migrated, women took up supple-
mentary livelihoods like opening a temporary shop, which
came with financial (such as, paying bribes to the police for
illegally opening shops), physical (example, added household
labor), and psychosocial hardships (like, discouragement in
participating in village councils) (Singh, 2019). Therefore,
women left behind are not ‘vulnerable’ or helpless as com-
monly reported (Singh, 2019). However, male-outmigration
puts women and children at additional risk of malnutrition
due to decreased food consumption and an increased dropout
rate from school. While women may become de facto heads
of the household under these circumstances, children may
be forced to embark upon an early entry into exploitative
work to compensate for the loss in agricultural income, or
household/farm activities (Bhatta et al., 2015). However,
this depends on circumstances because migrant or non-mi-
grant status within households responds to dynamic external
shocks/stresses resulting in a constant shift in households de-
ploying their labor for different purposes (Singh, 2019).
Nomadic pastoral communities in Gujarat such as Maldharis
(‘mal’ means livestock and ‘dhari’ means keepers in Hindi)
also observe migration as an adaptation strategy to cope with
prolonged droughts and its consequences on water & fodder
scarcity for livestock (Venkatasubramanian & Ramnarain,
2018). Pastoralists’ ability to find fodder for their livestock
determined seasonal migration across villages. Customarily,
pastoralists would travel to fertile lands in Southern Gujarat
in search for fodder for their livestock. Non-pastoralist
farmers would allow pastoralists’ livestock to graze on their
fields in exchange for manure and milk products from pas-
toralists’ livestock. The non-monetary relationship between
non-pastoralists and pastoralists allowed the latter to live
self-sufficiently while sustaining their low impact
livelihoods. However, the study revealed that blockage of
traditional migration routes, destruction of coastal
mangroves, agricultural intensification9 and privatization of
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1 41
common grazing/wastelands for agriculture and industry
reduced the availability of common resources such as
fodder and water. Lack of fodder for livestock caused
conflict over resources between them and local communities
and prompted them to go back to their villages, rendering
migration as a precarious strategy.
Women were explicitly averse to migration because they
were responsible for bringing fuelwood and water.
Ecosystem degradation further jeopardized the conditions
of pastoralist women as they would have to travel to
farther and unfamiliar places in search for fuelwood &
water and local distribution centers to sell milk. These
responsibilities also came at the cost of leaving their
children unattended while being away on the hunt for
basic amenities (Venkatasubramanian & Ramnarain,
2018). The authors argue that the state’s development
policies need to be more favorable to pastoralists, in
addition to sedentary populations. Devel-opment
approaches favoring industrialization, agricultural
transformation are arguably making pastoralists
structurally vulnerable by preventing them from accessing
the commons with further negative impacts on the
pastoralist women.
4.4 Change in livestock-profile
A study of indigenous pastoral communities’ (Bharwad
and Rabari) response to climate variability and extremes
in the state of Gujarat, in western India, shows that one
adaptation strategy to counter drought conditions was a shift
in livestock profile from small to large stock
(Venkatasubramanian & Ramnarain, 2018). The authors
suggest that this may be attributed to the economic
environment driving pastoral communities to depend on
Gujarat’s dairy cooperatives, which constitute the largest
buyer of milk only from cattle and buffalo (not goats/
sheep). Even though smaller stocks such as goats, sheep
and chickens provide income stability through quick sales
and are easier to maintain (easier to migrate and more
resilient to diseases) and feed (requiring lesser water and
fodder) during times of distress-migration, institutional
preference for cattle/buffalo milk make smaller stocks
less economically viable as compared to larger stocks
(Venkata-subramanian & Ramnarain, 2018). Additionally,
pastoralists lack the freedom to sell cattle meat due to
staunch politicoreligious (Hindu) ideals prohibiting the
killing, selling and consumption of beef.
Grazing of smaller ruminants was the task of pastoralist men
mostly done in common lands. At the same time, stall-
feeding of larger stock, foraging for fuelwood and
fodder, and providing them with water were women’s
responsibility. The shift to a larger stock increased the
10 A particular study analyzing panel data of electricity pricing regime, well density (number of wells), groundwater levels and groundwater irrigated area shows that an increase in well den-
sity and shift in electricity pricing from pro-rata regime to fully subsisdized pricing regime leads to signicant negative impact on water table and area irrigated per well. The study argues
that pro-rata pricing of electricity and regulation of well drilling will help mitigate unsustainable decline in water table (Mohanasundari and Balasubramanian 2015). But such a reasoning
puts a lot of burden on farmers (who are structurally unable to control production-related factors such as agricultural policies and market-based demands) to change their water-extractive
habits without adequately holding the neoliberal regimes into account that commodied water for prot in the rst place.
stock with smaller ones as an adaptation strategy. Here, we
see markets and politics as barriers to a sustainable shift in
livestock prole.
4.5 Change in food and agricultural practices
A qualitative study (Rao et al., 2019) conducted in the
Bhavani basin in Southern India shows that agriculture in the
region shifted from subsistence, rainfed farming to intensive-
ly irrigated cash crop cultivation. Perverse incentives
met out by the state enable this shift in the type of
agriculture. Incentives include fully subsidized electricity
for groundwater pumping and the absence of regulatory
policy/institutions.10 Increased dependence on groundwater
and decreased rainfall is a dual process that is causing a
shift in control of water resources from communities to
individuals. This shift in control is increasing existing
inequities based on caste, class and gender. Furthermore,
Singh (2018) showed that a (water) supply-oriented
mindset (without attempting behavioral changes in
reducing demand) promoted by watershed development
program in drought-prone villages in western India
facilitated maladaptive behavioral practices of farmers which
include continued digging of wells to extract groundwater for
irrigation, and a shift towards growing water-intensive
crops such as garlic as opposed to traditionally grown
black gram (Singh, 2018).
In terms of socio-economic and cultural adaptation strategies
in Uttarakhand, men prioritized the adoption of changes in
“food habits” and receipt of subsidized seed and food, while
women prioritized safeguarding traditional knowledge and
culture in food preparation and the adoption of seed exchange
to cope with food insecurity. Men and women preferred eco-
system-based adaptation strategies such as intercropping and
crop rotation; and adoption of traditional crop varieties and
modes of weather forecasting (changing trends in wings of
ants, birds, moon, and winds) (Ravera et al., 2016).
The northern state of Bihar however, showed contrasting
evidence in that only men preferred agro-biodiversity,
including intercropping and crop rotation systems,
planting short-cycle crop species, and traditional seed
varieties (Ravera et al., 2016,). Men and women preferred
technological adaptation strategies (agrochemicals,
irrigation and improved seeds) over ecosystem-based
solutions. Contradictory adaptation preference disputes
ecofeminist argument of ideologizing women’s
connectedness with nature in determining their adaptation
strategies (Agarwal, 1992). Among women in Bihar, those
from socially perceived lower caste hierarchy preferred
decreasing their consumption as a mechanism of change in
food habit. Studies show higher willingness in adopting al-
ternative livelihood strategies such as caring for small
ruminants and cattle, piece-rated and home-based work duri-
42 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
ng the drought years, and to participate in government/
non-government led training and extension programs on
adaptation processes, among the underprivileged caste
groups (relative to privileged ones) in southern India and
Bihar (Rao et al., 2019; Ravera et al., 2016). Preferences
also varied across younger and older women owing to
mobility. Finally, both women and men in the southern
states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana show preference
for drought-resistant crops, and livestock farming as
alternative to crop failure from extreme weather conditions
(Xenarios et al., 2017, p. 163). Therefore, gendered
preferences in the adoption of adaptation strate-gies are
determined by intersecting categories of geography, class,
gender and wealth (Ravera et al., 2016).
4.6 Analyses on vulnerabilities and gender
relations
4.6.1 Intersectionality, women’s uneven agencies and
gen-dered vulnerabilities to water scarcity:
For female and male farmers, water and food security are
crucial for livelihood security; these are dependent on tra-
ditional commons & regenerative agriculture, all of which
are shrinking due to modernization. Gender is thus, among
many other dimensions of vulnerability - socio-economic in-
equality, economic globalization, poverty, and disability-all
of which interlock to create a bundle of unique vulnerabil-
ities to climate change. Gender identities and adaptation
needs are also intersectional across social groups (migrants/
non-migrants, pastoralists/sedentary populations, dalits/
privileged castes, adivasis/non-tribals, big farmers,
small farmers, landowners/sharecroppers etc.).
Women’s structural vulnerability is rooted in androcentric
“patterns of practices, processes and power relations that
render some groups or persons more disadvantaged than
others” (Jerneck, 2018, p. 7). These translate into men’s
and women’s differential access to critical information on
cropping patterns and weather alerts; and land, informa-
tion, capital and credit, and other inputs (Doss, Meinzen-
Dick, Quisumbing, & Theis, 2018,; Jerneck, 2018). Further,
adaptation needs/preferences are also gendered because of
gendered subjectivities that connect with gender roles or di-
Table 1- Summary of climate change adaptation actions and their underlying vulnerabilities, linked with sustainable
degrowth-based adaptation principles
verging gendered epistemologies (not going into the
debate whether epistemological differences are sex-
based, socially constructed or both).
Social construction of the nexus between women’s
vulnerability and crisis response should not be
synonymously interpreted with ‘weakness’ or ‘victimhood’
as typecasted in most literature on disaster (Enarson, 1998).
Because women are not “passive” (Mohanty, 1988)
subjects of development but active agents of change and
decision-making processes, albeit facing contextual barriers
even within a single country (in this case, India). Rural
women can resist negative power or sources of oppression
such as structures of domination including patriarchy,
social hierarchy, and market forces towards
empowerment but may fail to achieve changes when they
lack access to requisite resources (Guenther, 2015;
Kabeer, 2005). Informal institutions such as women’s
self-help groups display the potential of collective
action by improving gender relations on decision-
making, so called productive and reproductive labor,
financial matters (Xe-narios et al., 2017, p. 7) and
ownership patterns of land.
4.6.2 Plural notions of masculinity and men’s
contextual vulnerability to water scarcity and climate
change
Notions of masculinity may shape men’s unique
vulnerability to climate change in terms of pressure to
handle the responsibility of being key decision-makers in
households and stigma around asking for help among close
friends/relatives, and migrating to precarious sites for jobs
(Demetriades & Esplen, 2008, p. 25). Such notions may
polarize distinctions between men’s and women’s
expected roles (Paulson & Boose, 2019, p. 4). For
example, while women in Andhra Pradesh (Xenarios et al.,
2017) displayed greater social cohesion as a coping
mechanism to financial distress by asking for help among
family members, men displayed risky behavior towards
taking loans from unreliable sources (money-lenders).
Men’s vulnerabilities are also linked with women’s because
their loss of income & perceived dignity often cause
domestic violence against women or put additional pressure
of financial insecurity on them. At the same time, notions of
masculinity are intersectional and plural because they vary
across geography & wealth groups as we see from the case
study wherein some men preferred agro-ecological and some
preferred technological pathways to adapt. This
example debunks over generalization of the
hegemonic notion of masculinity which is hinged upon
the logic of domination over nature.
4.6.3 Structural barriers, everyday gender relations and
subjectivities
The case studies illuminate the non-universal nature of
knowledge possessed by, and adaptation strategies adopted
by male and female farmers cutting across various social
identities. A gender relations approach to climate change
ad-aptation helps to understand how vulnerability interacts
with plural gendered notions of ‘being a poor man’, ‘being a
poor woman’, or ‘being a farmer from a certain social
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
group in rural contexts. In addition, the nature of poverty
being relational makes it important to understand how
gender identities interact with other sources of inequalities
and discrimination to generate unique forms of
deprivation. Across all the case studies, division of labor
& priorities based on gender has been the “primary
axis of social organization; women’s domestic
responsibilities, productive labor and community
roles”, and fairly consistent within the international
development literature (Enarson, 1998, p. 159).
Men and women respond differently to water scarcity
because their material relationship with water varies on the
basis of their everyday gendered division of labor.
Women’s/men’s strategic interests in activities that
require water are negotiated on an everyday basis within
and outside households. This makes the meanings of water
subjective, gendered, intersectional, contextual, and thus
plural. Structural barriers like capitalist economic system
(shrinking commons and incentives towards agricultural
intensification and intensive cropping) deepen gender
inequities by reducing women & water to commodities,
and human nature to rational egoism. Ultimately, they lead
to maladaptive outcomes. Water being a source of
everyday life, its scarcity invariably negatively affects
livelihood & household food security, and well-being
especially of women on an everyday basis, due to their
‘double burden’ (Elson, 1990; Guenther, 2015, p. 34;
Sallan, 2020, p. 504) of undertaking care responsibilities in
addition to fulfilling agricultural works.
Water is life, water is political, and securities around water
& food are linked to unequal power relations, all of which
render the notion of scarcity artificial, relational and con-
tested. In a warming & uncertain planet, these complex-
ities across geographies require an intersectional approach
to justice that is not only anti-patriarchal but looks at power
relations among and between women and men in plural and
contextual contexts; and links local water, ecological &
life struggles/subjectivities to larger historical and global
power structures such as anthropocentric, colonial,
capitalist, and other local/regional/global relations of
domination and exploitation, in order to dismantle &
transform them (Krishna & Kulkarni, 2018, pp. 242–
247). Therefore, sustainable adaptation to water scarcity
needs a framework that incorporates gender justice in
relation to water justice. The next section explores this
possibility.
5 HOW DO THE CONCEPTS
OF SUSTAINABLE ADAPTATION,
DEGROWTH AND GENDER INTERACT
ON THE GROUND, IN RELATION TO
WATER JUSTICE?
De-growth is a movement that arose from dissatisfaction
with linear progress, modern & imperialistic modes of pro-
duction and lifestyle because of its negative planetary conse-
43
44 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
-quences such as species extinction, climate change, and
extreme global inequality. By trying the concepts of
sustainable adaptation laid down by Hallstrom Eriksen et al.
(2011, pp. 11–15) and degrowth (in the global South), the
following interrelated elements or principles of
sustainable de-growth-based adaptation, which are gender
just are advanced (see Figure 5 for conceptual framework
and Table 1 for how the framework may be
operationalized).
The principles are explained with the help of findings from
the case studies. The framework is not aimed to be
universal and generalizable being conscious of the fact that
adaptation strategies are local and situated in multiple
and diverging contexts globally and even within India’s
plural, historical, cultural and political settings. The aim is
to re-politicize sustainable adaptation as transformative
politics; and initiate debates about placing community-
based notions of sustainability, fairness, equity,
participation and democracy at the heart of adaptation and
development policies so that climate vulnerable agricultural
populations across genders can be the true agents of their
own water just futures. The aim is also to prevent
sustainable adaptation from falling into the business-as-
usual politics of sustainable development that sees
vulnerable populations and women only as objects of eco-
nomic growth and capital accumulation (Brown, 2011, p.
29; Krishna & Kulkarni, 2018).
Figure 5: Conceptual framework for sustainable degrowth-based climate
change adaptation principles
5.1 Identication of historical, structural and contextual
factors, which creates vulnerability such as poverty, hege-
monic masculinity, coloniality, patriarchy, caste, and unequal
terms of trade. All of the above inuence the outcomes of
adaptation measures and center the needs of the most vul-
nerable groups as a way forward to reduce structural in-
equality. Leigey (2021) calls reduction of inequality as the
rst principle of degrowth in the global South. He propos-
11 In 2013, India’s Gini coefcient was 0.34 that increased after the Covid-19 pandemic (Oxfam, 2022). Gini Coefcient was measured by considering “poverty headcounts and the mean
income/consumption gures for 2010” and then establishing “what Gini coefcient is compatible with those two numbers if income/consumption has a lognormal distribution in the coun-
try”. See (Oxfam, 2013a).
12 Here, gender regimes refer to “institutions that determine how resources are accessed, distributed and consumed, how labor is coded, recoded and divided into both productive and repro-
ductive tasks and how social practices and responsibilities are discursively defined and fulfilled” (Jerneck, 2018, p. 1). Also, see (Rao et al., 2019) on gender-coded labor.
13 This is not to say that all technologies are bad but I argue for more mindfulness around its sustainability, cultural acceptance, and politics more broadly.
es a de-commodied mix of unconditional and free access
to basic needs and income (in local currencies or through
reciprocity) to secure accommodation, food, water, energy,
clothes, education, health, basic tools in combination with a
cap on maximum income. The pursuit of economic growth
and high agricultural productivity for its own sake come with
ecological costs (shrinking commons, degraded top soil,
water pollution, etc.). They should be abolished and replaced
with communities’ notion of well-being that maximize sus-
tainability of ecosystems & nutrition, for current and future
generation of farmers.
In India, it is estimated that if Gini coefficient, a
measurement of inequality of income, wealth and other
assets is reduced by 10 points, then its “equivalent of a 36
percent reduction, could almost eliminate extreme poverty
altogether, by lifting up a further 83 million
people”(Oxfam, 2013a).11 Gender inequality arises within
this structural context, leaving a gap between one’s doings/
actions and capabilities, or between choice/aspirations and
doings/actions; both stem from gendered power relations
across class, caste and ethnicity (Agarwal et al., 2003, p.
8). Assets such as land & water rights, agricultural
technologies, livestock, knowledge, and social capital facil-
itate one’s adaptation actions and hence must be
accessible by all genders without barriers. Patriarchal
relations must be corrected within the context of broader
“gender regimes” and politico-economic system.12
Gendered barriers must be addressed at household/family,
market, community, and state levels by transforming
relations of inequality and oppression into relations of care
(Agarwal, 1995).
5.2 Recognition of competing interests and values
prioritized by different social groups affects the outcomes
of adaptation measures particularly for the most
vulnerable. Powerful and vested interest in specific
adaptation strategies may benefit/harm some among and
across genders. The case studies show that competing
interests vary among genders and among rural women,
which can be visualized through an. Universal and top-down
laws/policies around assets will not enable transformative
adaptation and social equity because adaptation
preferences & gendered barriers are intersubjective,
intersectional, and operate through community norms.
Vulnerabilities of the most marginalized groups should
be addressed and efforts should be made for bringing
powerful groups on board towards solidarity, in order to
prevent conflict among groups. There needs to be a
“balance between collective interests and individual
freedoms” to ensure peace and harmony (Kothari et al.
2014).
5.3 Integration of traditional, local, and community
knowledge with other sources of knowledge on
adaptation strategies: Top-down technology-based13
45
climate change adaptation strategies are often incapable of
mitigating slow onset climatic events such as droughts.
This is because they are either unaware of local ecological
conditions or lack sensitivity towards deep-rooted local
norms thereby reducing communities’ flexibility in opting
from a reservoir of adaptive actions (Mcneeley, 2012).
Adaptation planning should thus, be done with farmers and
not through distant imaginations.
While being sensitive to local culture, adaptation strat-
egies should also account for local social “processes
and politics” (e.g.: corruption, elite capture), which, if not
considered, may nullify the goals of sustainability (Singh,
2018). From a gender relations perspective, attention
should be paid to community politics because farm, off-
farm, and household labor are gender coded.
Community knowledge varies across social groups
(Adivasis/tribals, Dalits/scheduled castes, privileged
caste groups), and gender relations therein will also
vary. Indian women’s traditional farming knowledge
was systematically sidelined by allowing multinational
companies to modernize agriculture through imposition of
patents on seed varieties and industrialization (Shiva,
2016). Several Dalit women in rural Andhra Pradesh in
Southern India have resisted by not buying their seeds
(Guenther, 2015). We also saw how subsistence ways of
living for pastoralist communities was threatened. Such
local and global neocolonial forces in the name of de-
velopment threaten subsistence economies; and should be
dismantled by reviving women’s and men’s traditional
knowledge and allowing their agencies to transform
developmental thinking. Finally, there is a danger of
adaptation interventions being “overly local” because
migration is contributing to multi-local households
across geographies (Singh, 2019).
5.4 Promotion of accountability in adaptation
process-es through direct democracy where
communities participate in active decision-making in
face-to-face administrative settings. Accountability should
be encouraged through political and economic democracy
(Kothari, 2014; Kothari et al., 2014). While political democ-
racy recognizes community control over decision-making re-
specting ecological and cultural boundaries, the latter notion
recognizes community control over local means of produc-
tion, distribution, exchange, and markets for basic needs.
Such radical democratic principles will help nurture com-
munal sovereignty and dismantle self-interested economic
rationality in relation to their de-commodified basic needs,
and in this case water. Accountability can be
accomplished through direct participation by communities
in face-to-face settings for strengthening transparency.
These values should also consider the gendered differences
in power, voice, and agency that may impact the quality of
participation in face-to-face settings. Participation is
distinct from merely informing people about a project
or ‘tokenism’, which involves superficial consultation
with local beneficiaries (Singh, 2018).
Singh (2018) argues that the watershed guidelines in India
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
rightly include “community involvement, ownership, and
empowerment” but are ambiguous enough to pass off as to-
kenism. Tokenist measures like, merely increasing women’s
representation in local institutions are mere quantitative indi-
cators that hardly tell anything about the quality of
procedural justice and the extent to which women’s ‘water
knowledges’ (Kulkarni, 2016) are meaningfully integrated.
5.5 Recognition of positive and negative feedback
from local adaptation measures on planetary
processes in order to avoid any negative socio-
economic-biophysical impacts (Bennett, Blythe, Tyler, &
Ban, 2016, pp.) For instance, over-abstraction of water in
the upper streams along the canal systems can cause
insufficient water downstream (Xenarios et al., 2017).
Adaptation actions could also fail its sustainability goals if
embedded within a larger extractive economic system,
which promotes rational self-interest in the face of
water scarcity (Singh, 2018). This principle should go
hand in hand with consciously removing anthropocentric
values in adaptation strategies by promoting in-
terconnectedness between human and non-human natures.
Notions of liberal feminism and emancipation incompatible
with planetary limits need to be de-prioritized to center ethics
of care, and solidarity with those living in the margins,
which include continued digging of wells to extract
groundwater for irrigation, and a shift towards growing
water-intensive crops such as garlic as opposed to
traditionally grown black gram (Singh, 2018, p. 54).
6 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Findings from the case studies show that climate change
adaptation strategies can not be generalized because local
climate impacts are grounded in context specific political,
cultural, hydrological, and geographical settings. Yet,
barriers to adaptation strategies converge at places that
question unequal power. Flowing from this thought, I
show that notions of gender identity are in multitude
(plural), and no singular feminist ideology neatly theorizes
the relationship between gender, water, sustainability,
and social well-being. Plural concepts of gender identity,
well-being, justice, and sustainability across various
social groups intersect to produce situated, historical,
context specific, and power laden barriers to sustainable
adaptation.
In the context of climate change, it is important to pluralize
and politicize the concept of SD, while dismantling oppres-
sive and context specific hierarchies (Taylor, 2013b).
Adaptation pathways integrated with SD policies cannot
yield equitable outcomes because the latter aligns with
capitalist economic growth as an end in itself that creates
new forms of deprivation and ecological unsustainability
(Adams, 2009; Klein et al., 2007). They are not gender-
just because capitalist economic determinism (i.e., the
assumption that capitalist economic norms such as
rationality, profitability and individualism lay the
foundations of socio-political arrangements across all -
46 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
societies) does not consider non-material conditions and
culture specific norms that sustain natural resource based
livelihoods. Capitalist economic determinism relies upon a
colonial notion of good life that construes subsistence and
rural way of life as inferior, and is ordered upon patriarchal
division of labor within which rural women and men cannot
fully exercise their agency in equitably accessing de-
commodified water and commons towards liberating their
time and energy.
We need a politics of intersectional feminism and local
community sovereignty embedded into a just economic
paradigm. Adaptation actions should be linked with
climate change mitigation goals of 1.5°C target that can be
achieved through degrowth in the North (Keyßer &
Lenzen, 2021) and South (socio-economic-ecological
justice in the Indian context). This way, the root causes of
vulnerability may be transformed because farmers across
genders would be able to exercise sovereignty over
resources (beyond water) and achieve self-reliance to live
sustainable & meaningful lives that ‘they’ (not policy-
makers/states) have a reason to value.
Water policies need to be integrated into just development
paradigms. These policies need to be looked at more
broadly across scales (because of water’s biophysical
characteristics) and the spectrum of resource struggles
(against commodification) through which it flows to
promote climate justice for vulnerable populations. While
gender is an important analytic tool to understand how
water is contested every day along with gender regimes, it is
one among several intersecting socio-economic advantages
and disadvantages that determine the relational vulnerability
of livelihoods (Ahlers & Zwarteveen, 2009, p. 419). Policies
should not frame struggles over water as struggles of
women or binary gender identities (such as traditional/
modern,victims/agents, masculine/feminine) (Ahlers &
Zwarteveen, 2009, p. 419; Kulkarni, 2016, p. 87).
Policies should also not look at women’s labor as door-
ways to capital accumulation and modernization (Krishna &
Kulkarni, 2018, p. 245). Instead, they should focus on gender
relations; and aim at behavioral changes that transform pa-
triarchal, rationalist, anthropocentric, and other relations
of domination over humans and non-humans across every
adaptation pathway and process. States should revive local
meanings & knowledge of decommodified water (Kulkarni,
2016, p. 87), and situate women’s meaningful
participation (beyond representation) within grassroots
regimes of justice and struggles/movements.
7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article is part of a PhD project funded by the European
Joint Doctorate in Law and Development (EDOLAD).
Some of the pictures used as illustrations in this paper are
taken from the author’s ongoing fieldwork in rural Eastern
India with the consent of research participants. The paper
was presented in the EDOLAD Summer School, 2020,
organized in Potchefstroom, South Africa, under the
theme: Decolonising our field, and data justice (https://
lawdev.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/
EDOLAD_Summer-school-2020_scholar-ship-call.pdf).
The author is extremely thankful to the comments
received from the EDOLAD community and anonymous
reviewers of this article.
8 CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri is the principal author of this
review article and declares no conflict of interests.
9 REFERENCES
Adams, W. M. (2009). Green Development 3rd edition: Environ-
ment and sustainability in a developing world.
Agarwal, B. (1995). A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights
in South Asia (Cambridge South Asian Studies). In Cambridge
Books. https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/CBO9780511522000
Agarwal, B., Humphries, J., & Robeyns, I. (2003). Explor-
ing the challenges of Amartya Sen’s work and ideas: An
introduction. Feminist Economics, Vol. 9. https://doi.
org/10.1080/1354570032000099039
Ahlers, R., & Zwarteveen, M. (2009). The water question in fem-
inism: water control and gender inequities in a neo-liberal
era. Gender, Place and Culture, 16(4), 409–426. https://doi.
org/10.1080/09663690903003926
Aryal, J. P., Farnworth, C. R., Khurana, R., Ray, S., & Sapkota,
T. B. (n.d.). Gender dimensions of climate change ad-
aptation through climate smart agricultural practic-
es in India. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/
academia.edu.documents/46453364/Gender_dimen-
sions_of_climate_change_adap20160613-23862-1v6ul4z.
pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B lename%3D-
Gender_dimensions_of_climate_change_adap.pdf&X-Amz-
Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X
Asian Development Bank. (2005). Climate Proong: A Risk-based
Approach to Adaptation.
Barnett, J., & O’Neill, S. (2010). Maladaptation - Editorial. Global
Environmental Change.
Bennett, N. J., Blythe, J., Tyler, S., & Ban, N. C. (2016). Com-
munities and change in the anthropocene: understanding so-
cial-ecological vulnerability and planning adaptations to mul-
tiple interacting exposures. Regional Environmental Change,
16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-015-0839-5
Bhambra, G. K. (2020). Colonial global economy: towards a theo-
retical reorientation of political economy. https://doi.org/10.10
80/09692290.2020.1830831
Bhatta, G., Aggarwal, P., Poudel, S., & Belgrave, D. (2015). Cli-
mate-induced migration in South Asia: Migration decisions
and gender dimensions of adverse climatic events. The Journal
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1 47
of Rural and Community Development.
Boelens, R., Vos, J., & Perreault, T. (2021). Introduction: The Mul-
tiple Challenges and Layers of Water Justice Struggles. In
Water Justice (pp. 1–32). Cambridge University Press. https://
doi.org/10.1017/9781316831847.001
Brown, K. (2011). Sustainable adaptation: An oxymoron? Climate
and Development, 3(1), 21–31. https://doi.org/10.3763/
cdev.2010.0062
Calzadilla, P. V. (2021). The SD Goals, climate crisis and sustained
injustices. Onati Socio-Legal Series, 11(1), 285–314. https://
doi.org/10.35295/OSLS.IISL/0000-0000-0000-1158
Chattopadhyay, P. (2021). Locating Agricultural Distress in India:
Realigning for Sustainability and Nutritional Security. In En-
vironment, Development and Sustainability in India: Perspec-
tives, Issues and Alternatives. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-
981-33-6248-2_9
Cohen, S., Demeritt, D., Robinson, J., & Rothman, D. (1998).
Climate change and SD: Towards dialogue. Global En-
vironmental Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-
3780(98)00017-X
Dalin, C., Wada, Y., Kastner, T., & Puma, M. J. (2017). Ground-
water depletion embedded in international food trade. Nature,
543(7647). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21403
D’Alisa Giacomo, Demaria Federico, & Kallis Giorgios. (2014).
Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. In Routledge (1st ed.).
Routledge.
Dasgupta, P. (2016). What’s missing from the SDGs | Devex. Re-
trieved March 1, 2021, from Devex website: https://www.
devex.com/news/what-s-missing-from-the-sdgs-88207
Dasgupta, P. (2021). The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta
Review. Retrieved from www.gov.uk/ofcial-documents.
Elson, Diane. 1990. Male Bias in the Development Process. Man-
chester: Manchester University Press. https://genderandse-
curity.org/projects-resources/research/male-bias-develop-
ment-process.
Eriksen, S., Schipper, E. L. F., Scoville-Simonds, M., Vincent, K.,
Adam, H. N., Brooks, N., Harding, B., Khatri, D., Lenaerts,
L., Liverman, D., Mills-Novoa, M., Mosberg, M., Movik, S.,
Muok, B., Nightingale, A., Ojha, H., Sygna, L., Taylor, M.,
Vogel, C., & West, J. J. (2021). Adaptation interventions and
their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hin-
drance or irrelevance? World Development, 141. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105383
Eriksen, S., Aldunce, P., Bahinipati, C. S., Martins, R. D. A.,
Molefe, J. I., Nhemachena, C., … Ulsrud, K. (2011). When
not every response to climate change is a good one: Identify-
ing principles for sustainable adaptation. Climate and Devel-
opment. https://doi.org/10.3763/cdev.2010.0060
Eriksen, S., & Brown, K. (2011). Sustainable adaptation to climate
change. Climate and Development. https://doi.org/10.3763/
cdev.2010.0064
Eriksen, S. H., & O’brien, K. (2007). Vulnerability, poverty and
the need for sustainable adaptation measures. Climate Policy,
7(4), 337–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2007.96856
60
French, D. (Ed.). (2018). SD Goals : law, theory and implementa-
tion. Edward Elgar.
Ghosh, Jayati. 2016. “Time Poverty and the Poverty of Economics
.” METU Studies in Development 43: 1–19. https://open.metu.
edu.tr/bitstream/handle/11511/58202/879-5049-1-PB.pdf.
Government of India. (2021). Economic Survey 2020-21. Re-
trieved March 1, 2021, from Ministry Of Finance website:
https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey/
Guenther, J. (2015). Gender and Globalization Power Relations
at India’s Margins. Journal of Developing Societies, 31(1),
28–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/0169796X14562938
Gurminder K. Bhambra (2021) Colonial global economy: towards
a theoretical reorientation of political economy, Review of In-
ternational Political Economy, 28:2, 307-322, https://doi.org/1
0.1080/09692290.2020.1830831
Hickel, J. (2020). What does degrowth mean? A few points of clar-
ication. Globalizations, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/147477
31.2020.1812222
Hickel, J. (2021). The anti-colonial politics of degrowth. Po-
litical Geography, 88, 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
polgeo.2021.102404
Hickel, J., Sullivan, D., & Zoomkawala, H. (2021). Plunder in
the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global
South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018. New Political
Economy, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899
153
S. Eriksen, P. Aldunce, C.S. Bahinipati, R.D. Martins, J.I. Molefe,
C. Nhemachena, K. O’Brien, F. Olorunfemi, J. Park, L. Sugna,
K. Ulsrud (2011). When not every response to climate change
is a good one: Identifying principles for sustainable adaptation.
Climate and Development, 3(1), 7–20. https://doi.org/10.3763/
cdev.2010.0060
Harris, J. M. (2000). Basic Principles of SD. In Tufts University.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-6526(01)00061-0
IPCC. (2014a). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and
Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of
Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the In-
tergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Retrieved from
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGI-
IAR5-PartB_FINAL.pdf
IPCC. (2014b). Part B: Regional Aspects: Volume 2, Regional
Aspects: Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth As-
sessment Report. In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adapta-
tion and Vulnerability - Contributions of the Working Group II
to the Fifth Assessment Report.
Kabeer, N. (2005). Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment:
A Critical Analysis of the Third Millennium Development
Goal. Gender and Development, 13(1), 13–24. https://www.
48 Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1
jstor.org/stable/20053132?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents
Kelkar Govind. (2013). The Fog Of Entitlement: Women And Land
In India.
Kennet, M., & Heinemann, V. (2006). Green Economics: setting
the scene. Aims, context, and philosophical underpinning of
the distinctive new solutions offered by Green Economics. In-
ternational Journal of Green Economics, 1(1-2), 68-102.
Keyßer, L. T., & Lenzen, M. (2021). 1.5 °C degrowth scenarios
suggest the need for new mitigation pathways. Nature Com-
munications, 12(1), 2676. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-
021-22884-9
Klein, R. J. T., Eriksen, S. E. H., Næss, L. O., Hammill, A., Tanner,
T. M., Robledo, C., & O’Brien, K. L. (2007). Portfolio screen-
ing to support the mainstreaming of adaptation to climate
change into development assistance. Climatic Change. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s10584-007-9268-x
Kothari, A. (2014). Radical Ecological Democracy: A path forward
for India and beyond. Development, 57(1), 36–45. https://doi.
org/10.1057/dev.2014.43
Kothari, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (2014). Buen Vivir, De-
growth and Ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to SD and the
Green Economy. Development (Basingstoke). https://doi.
org/10.1057/dev.2015.24
Kothari, A., & Joy, K. J. (2017). Alternative Futures: India Un-
shackled. AuthorsUpFront Publishing Services Private
Limited, Delhi.
Kothari Ashish, Salleh Ariel, Escobar Arturo, Demaria Federico, A.
A. (2019). Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika
Books.
Krishna, S., & Kulkarni, S. (2018). Gender and water. In India’s
Water Futures (1st ed., pp. 235–252). Routledge India. https://
doi.org/10.4324/9780429423529-11/GENDER-WATER-SU-
MI-KRISHNA-SEEMA-KULKARNI
Kulkarni, S. (2016). Gender and Water in India: A Review. In
Indian Water Policy at the Crossroads: Resources, Technology
and Reforms (Vol. 16, pp. 73–91). Springer, Cham. https://doi.
org/10.1007/978-3-319-25184-4_5
Lang, M. (2017). Degrowth - Unsuited for the Global South? Alter-
nautas, 4(1), 100–113. Retrieved from https://www.research-
gate.net/publication/320309835_Degrowth_-_Unsuited_for_
the_Global_South
Lélé, S. M. (1991). SD: A critical review. World Development,
19(6), 607–621. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493744
Liegey, V. (2021, February 12). Convivial Degrowth or Barbarity?
L’Internationale Online. Retrieved from https://www.interna-
tionaleonline.org/research/politics_of_life_and_death/156_
convivial_degrowth_or_barbarity/
Liegey, V., & Nelson, A. (2020). Exploring Degrowth. Retrieved
from https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342023/explor-
ing-degrowth/
Mcneeley, S. M. (2012). Examining barriers and opportunities for
sustainable adaptation to climate change in Interior Alaska.
835–857. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0158-x
Mekonnen, M. M., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2016). Four billion people
facing severe water scarcity. Science advances, 2(2), e1500323.
Mohanasundari, T., & Balasubramanian, R. (2015). Impact of Cli-
matic and Anthropogenic Factors on Groundwater Irrigation
in South India. In Conict Resolution in Water Resources and
Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-
319-14215-9_16
Mohanty, C. (1988). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship
and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review, 30(1), 61–88. Re-
trieved from www.jstor.org
Mun Ghosh, M., & Ghosh, A. (2014). Analysis of Women Partici-
pation in Indian Agriculture. IOSR Journal Of Humanities And
Social Science (IOSR-JHSS, 19(5), 1–6. Retrieved from www.
iosrjournals.org
O’Brien, M. J., & Holland, T. D. (1992). The Role of Adaptation in
Archaeological Explanation. American Antiquity. https://doi.
org/10.2307/2694834
Oxfam. 2013a. “Even It up: Time To End Extreme Inequality.”
———. 2013b. “When Women Farm India’s Land: How to In-
crease Ownership?”
———. 2022. “Inequality Kills.” doi:10.21201/2022.8465.
Paulson, S., & Boose, W. (2019). Masculinities and environment.
Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International Reviews,
14(30), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1079/PAVSNNR201914030
Raney T., G. Anríquez, A. Croppenstedt, S. Gerosa, S. Lowder, I
Matuscke, and J Skoet. 2011. “The Role of Women in Agricul-
ture.” https://www.fao.org/3/am307e/am307e00.pdf.
Rao, N., Lawson, E. T., Raditloaneng, W. N., Solomon, D., &
Angula, M. N. (2019). Gendered vulnerabilities to climate
change: insights from the semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia.
Climate and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.
2017.1372266
Rao, Smriti. 2011. “Work and Empowerment: Women and Agricul-
ture in South India.” The Journal of Development Studies 47
(2): 294–315. doi:10.1080/00220388.2010.506910.
Ravera, F., Martín-López, B., Pascual, U., & Drucker, A. (2016).
The diversity of gendered adaptation strategies to climate
change of Indian farmers: A feminist intersectional approach.
Ambio, 45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0833-2
Reid, H., Alam, M., Berger, R., Cannon, T., Huq, S., & Milligan,
A. (2009). Community-based adaptation to climate change: an
overview. Participatory Learning and Action, 60(1), 11–33.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0738-0593(96)00024-7
Roth, D., Zwarteveen, M., Joy, K. J., & Kulkarni, S. (2018).
Water governance as a question of justice: Politics,
rights, and representation. In Water Justice. https://doi.
org/10.1017/9781316831847.003
Roy Chaudhuri, N. (2021). Social movements and grassroots dis-
Roy Chaudhuri, 2022. The Journal of Gender and Water. 9:1 49
course of climate justice in the context of droughts in semi-ar-
id regions: A case study in India. Onati Socio-Legal Series,
11, 69–107. https://doi.org/10.35295/OSLS.IISL/0000-0000-
0000-1157
Sallan, I. F. (2020). Debt and climate: entangled emergencies de-
railing women’s rights and gender justice. Revista Estudos
Feministas. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2020.1838168
Shiva, V. (2016). Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food
Supply on JSTOR. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/sta-
ble/j.ctt19dzdd6
Shrivastava, A., & Kothari, A. (2014). Churning The Earth -
Penguin Random House India. India Penguin. https://penguin.
co.in/book/churning-the-earth/
Singh, C. (2018). Is participatory watershed development build-
ing local adaptive capacity? Findings from a case study in
Rajasthan, India. Environmental Development. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.envdev.2017.11.004
Singh, C. (2019). Migration as a driver of changing household
structures: implications for local livelihoods and adaptation.
Migration and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/2163232
4.2019.1589073
Sultana, F. (2018). Water justice: why it matters and how to achieve
it. Water International, 43(4), 483–493. https://doi.org/10.108
0/02508060.2018.1458272
Tandon, N. (2007). Biopolitics, climate change and water secu-
rity: impact, vulnerability and adaptation issues for women.
Agenda. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2007.9676064
Tanner, T., & Mitchell, T. (2009). Entrenchment or Enhance-
ment: Could Climate Change Adaptation Help to Reduce
Chronic Poverty? IDS Bulletin, 39(4), 6–15. https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2008.tb00471.x
Taylor, M. (2013a). Climate and Development Climate change, re-
lational vulnerability and human security: rethinking sustain-
able adaptation in agrarian environments. Climate and Devel-
opment, 5(4), 318–327. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.201
3.830954
Taylor, M. (2013b). Climate change, relational vulnerability and
human security: rethinking sustainable adaptation in agrarian
environments. Climate and Development. https://doi.org/10.1
080/17565529.2013.830954
Taylor, M. (2017). The political ecology of climate change adapta-
tion : livelihoods, agrarian change and the conicts of devel-
opment (1st ed.). Routledge.
Udmale, P. D., Ichikawa, Y., Manandhar, S., Ishidaira, H., Kiem,
A. S., Shaowei, N., & Panda, S. N. (2015). How did the 2012
drought affect rural livelihoods in vulnerable areas? Empir-
ical evidence from India. International Journal of Disas-
ter Risk Reduction, 13, 454–469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ijdrr.2015.08.002
Venkatasubramanian, K., & Ramnarain, S. (2018). Gender and
Adaptation to Climate Change: Perspectives from a Pasto-
ral Community in Gujarat, India. Development and Change,
49(6). https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12448
Verschuuren, J. (2013). Research handbook on climate change ad-
aptation law. In Research Handbook on Climate Change Adap-
tation Law. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781000083
Vidyasagar, D. (2007). Global minute: Water and health - Walking
for water and water wars. Journal of Perinatology, 27(1),
56–58. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jp.7211629
Xenarios, S., Kakumanu, K. R., Nagothu, U. S., & Kotapati, G. R.
(2017). Gender differentiated impacts from weather extremes:
Insight from rural communities in South India. Environmental
Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2017.05.002
Zwarteveen, M. (2008). Men, masculinities and water powers in
irrigation. Water Alternatives, 1(1), 111–130. https://www.wa-
ter-alternatives.org/index.php/allabs/19-a-1-1-7/le
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri is a PhD researcher
at Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University,
Netherlands. Her PhD, funded by the Eu-
ropean Joint Doctorate in Law & Develop-
ment, focuses on the role of gendered rural
communities’ knowledge in enabling sus-
tainable climate change adaptation to water
scarcity. Her educational background is in
Law (BA), and Development Studies (MA). She pursued both
these degrees in India. Nairita’s research interest lies in
investigating the relationship between law, political ecology, and
economy from feminist perspectives. She is interested in how
power relations & identities related to gender, race, caste, class,
geography, coloniality and among others interact with subjective
and intersubjective experience of climate change impacts in the
global South. She is also interested in how such relations &
identities are renegotiated and reorganized in order to cope with
climate change and reconfigure ‘other’ & sustainable modes of
living.
