Sustainable Livelihoods and Politics at the Margins: Environmental Displacement in South Asia
Main funder
Funder's project number: 351757
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 143 893,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/03/2018
Project end date: 28/02/2023
Summary
This research projects concerns the problem of environmental displacement and its consequences in the developing world. The focus of the project will be on the struggles for livelihood by the displaced people in Bangladesh and India, countries which have been ranked as being among the most vulnerable to climate change over the next 30 years. Our research examines displacement in India and Bangladesh due to the rising seawater, cyclones, and floods. The broad aim of the project is to understand the process of environmental displacement and thereby generate novel ideas and insights to improve theory, policy and practice by means of which the environmental migrants’ right to sustainable livelihoods could be ensured.
We seek an understanding of how people perceive and negotiate their weather and climate related displacement and struggle for their right to earn a sustainable living as well as how such displacements are integrated into their pre-existing daily practices. We explore sustainability based on ethnographic data on human agency under the constraints of environmental challenges aiming to develop novel ways to understand sustainability as more than economic adaptation to environmental challenges. The project will explore climate change related displacement as a gendered process seeking to improve women’s position as part of the climate change related social processes and changes. By looking at how different types of weather and climate related phenomena (floods, cyclones and the rise of seawater) constrain social life in specific ways, the project contributes to the understanding of the entanglement of nature and society. The project also develops the anthropological understandings of the notions of holism and sustainability to understand interrelated social changes. The research data will begathered using the ethnographic method including semi-structured interviews and participant observation in the field. Research material will consist of recorded and transcribed interviews, fieldwork notes, films, and pictures and will be obtained through interviews, observation, photography, screen saving and videotaping.
We seek an understanding of how people perceive and negotiate their weather and climate related displacement and struggle for their right to earn a sustainable living as well as how such displacements are integrated into their pre-existing daily practices. We explore sustainability based on ethnographic data on human agency under the constraints of environmental challenges aiming to develop novel ways to understand sustainability as more than economic adaptation to environmental challenges. The project will explore climate change related displacement as a gendered process seeking to improve women’s position as part of the climate change related social processes and changes. By looking at how different types of weather and climate related phenomena (floods, cyclones and the rise of seawater) constrain social life in specific ways, the project contributes to the understanding of the entanglement of nature and society. The project also develops the anthropological understandings of the notions of holism and sustainability to understand interrelated social changes. The research data will begathered using the ethnographic method including semi-structured interviews and participant observation in the field. Research material will consist of recorded and transcribed interviews, fieldwork notes, films, and pictures and will be obtained through interviews, observation, photography, screen saving and videotaping.
Principal Investigator
Other persons related to this project (JYU)
Primary responsible unit
Related publications and other outputs
- A possible nature : environmental discourses and contested futures in the Indian Sundarbans (2022) Roy, Dayabati; A1
- Haisevan möykyn mysteeri (2022) Salmi, Jelena; E1; OA
- Kohti kestävää kehitystä? : Intian, Bangladeshin ja Pakistanin kamppailu ympäristöongelmien kanssa (2022) Tenhunen, Sirpa; A3; 978-951-29-9061-0
