Local Adaptation to Climate Change in South India: Challenges and the Future in the Tsunami-Hit Coastal Regions

This book critically discusses the vulnerabilities and local adaptation actions of the traditional marine fishers of the tsunami-hit coastal regions of South India to climate change and risks, with an emphasis on their local institutions. Thereby, it offers a comprehensive account of the ways in which marine fishers live and respond to climate change.

The Coromandel coastal regions of South India are known for their rich sociocultural history and enormous marine resources, as well as their long history of vulnerability to climate change and disasters, including the 2004 tsunami. By drawing cases from the tsunami-hit fishing villages of this coast, this book demonstrates that indigenous knowledge systems, climate change perceptions, sociocultural norms, and governance systems of the fishers influence and contest the local adaptation responses to climate change. By foregrounding the real picture of vulnerability and adaptation actions of marine fishers in the face of climate change and disasters, this book also challenges the conventional understanding of local institutions and fishers’ knowledge systems. Underlining that adaptation to climate change is a sociopolitical process, this book explores the potentials, limits, and complexities of local adaptation actions of marine fishers of this coast and offers novel insights and climate change lessons gleaned from the field to other coasts of India and around the world.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and policymakers in climate change, fisheries, environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, sustainable livelihoods, and natural resource management.

Devendraraj Madhanagopal (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor ( I ) in the School of Sustainability at XIM University (Odisha, India). He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (Mumbai, India). He is the recipient of several international travel grants/fellowships. His works appear in Environment, Development and Sustainability and Metropolitics journals. He is the corresponding editor of the following edited books: (i) Environment, Climate, and Social Justice: Perspectives and Practices from the Global South (2022), (ii) Climate Change and Risk in South and Southeast Asia: Sociopolitical Perspectives, Routledge, UK (forthcoming), and (iii) Social Work and Climate Justice: International Perspectives, Routledge, UK (forthcoming).