It\’s been three months into my new job as a postdoctoral researcher working on a multi-country, multidisciplinary project called Adaptation at Scale in Semi-arid Regions (ASSAR). The journey has been an exciting and challenging experience so far. In a recent blog, I documented my research team\’s visit to Navadarshanam and discussed how perhaps scaling up nicheContinue reading “Ecological restoration as an adaptation to climate variability: reflections from a visit to Navadarshanam”
Tag Archives: Climate change
ASSAR Annual Meeting: Notes on collaborative, interdisciplinary research
On my first day as a postdoctoral researcher on the ASSAR (Adaptation at Scale in Semi-arid Regions) project, I was hurled into a week-long ASSAR Annual Meeting held at IIHS, Bangalore. A wonderful mix between workshop, project meeting, networking event and academic brainstorming session, the week was the best possible induction I could get intoContinue reading “ASSAR Annual Meeting: Notes on collaborative, interdisciplinary research”
Shifting the discourse from adaptation to transformational adaptation
Shallow wells provide protective irrigation during in-season dry spells.But these coping strategies may not work in an agricultural system thatis intensifying towards water-intensive cash crops. There is growing concern that climate change adaptation may have \’somehow lost its edge…lost its spunk and it became just another term for development\’. My own research from Pratapgarh, aContinue reading “Shifting the discourse from adaptation to transformational adaptation”
Link Pack #6: Rural landscapes, M&E for climate change adaptation
Video: Stumbled upon an interesting repository of images from the British Empire at Colonial Film. Each video is accompanied by an analysis which is quite useful. Watching one 1943 video In Rural Maharashtra, I was struck by how effectively the role of women in an agricultural household was portrayed. Another interesting insight was corn being calledContinue reading “Link Pack #6: Rural landscapes, M&E for climate change adaptation”
Book Review: Water Resource Management in a Vulnerable World
Access to water is poised to be the issue future wars will be fought over, especially in the context of global climate change and its current and projected impacts. In Water Resource Management in a Vulnerable World: the hydro-hazardscapes of climate change, Daanish Mustafa, a Reader in Human Geography at King’s College, London, argues that the mostContinue reading “Book Review: Water Resource Management in a Vulnerable World”
Link Pack #5: Hydro-hazardscapes, waste management and mainstreaming CC adaptation
Book: I am reading the latest book by Daanish Mustafa (Reader, Geography at King\’s College, London) \’Water Resource Management in a Vulnerable World: The Hydro-hazardscapes of Climate Change\’. He introduces the concept of \’hydro-hazardscapes\’ to effectively capture the non-economic, socio-cultural values of water as well as emphasise the different constructions of threat as perceived by different stakeholders by usingContinue reading “Link Pack #5: Hydro-hazardscapes, waste management and mainstreaming CC adaptation”
Link Pack #4: Development economics, constructions of climate change
Book: Zed books, one of my favourite publishers, recently reissued several pivotal books under their Critique Influence Change Series. I just finished the incredibly provocative and engrossing \’Reclaiming Development\’ by Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel which makes a compelling case against neoliberal hegemony and maps out alternative economic instruments that can usher in stable, sustainable, and equitableContinue reading “Link Pack #4: Development economics, constructions of climate change”
Link Pack #3: Social learning, climate change, new book on State regulation
Sustainable development through social learning: A new paper in Nature Climate Change posits that wicked problems like climate change can greatly benefit from social learning approaches because they foster iterative, collaborative and participatory learning. An open access version of the paper is here. Ed Carr\’s blog: I have read several of Carr\’s papers and was reallyContinue reading “Link Pack #3: Social learning, climate change, new book on State regulation”
Discipline hopping: what does depression have to do with vulnerability science?
You often hear of the virtues of thinking \’out of the box\’, developing interdisciplinary reading habits, opening our minds to different influences and ideas. In spite of this, interdisciplinarity is a difficult monster to tame, and one commonly falls back on familiar authors, known reading lists, well-worn and oft-searched keywords. Skirting the peripheries of one\’sContinue reading “Discipline hopping: what does depression have to do with vulnerability science?”
Decision making for climate change adaptation
In a recent talk at the Walker Institute, climate change adaptation specialist Suraje Dessai stressed the need to move away from the linear model of \’predict and provide\’ which believes that more science = better decisions = successful adaptation, towards an understanding of the limits of what science can provide. Talking in the context of decision making for climateContinue reading “Decision making for climate change adaptation”
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