There has been a widespread call for the development of transformative adaptation knowledge and strategies in the Himalayan region because of the intensifying onset of climate change impacts. But such transformative thinking is absent in much of Himalayan climate knowledge production, which builds on environmental deterministic and techno-managerial renditions of exceptional precarity; advocates for an increase in the scientific and expert driven projects on the ground; and remains rooted in the scalar realities of the nation-state. This paper contributes to the rich scholarship that counterbalances depoliticized renditions of climate change adaptation, by presenting “everyday stories of adaptation” that have emerged from the authors’ work alongside Himalayan communities. In this work we ask, who is the subject in Himalayan climate adaptation discourse and policies? And how can their stories help us envision an adaptation praxis, which challenges regional narratives of crisis and provides alternatives to climate reductionist thinking/planning, by foregrounding the intersectionality and plurality of communities and ecologies? The stories come from three parts of the Himalaya: Uttarakhand, Khumbu, and Assam, and highlight the daily labor for adaptation and its mercurial relationship with the labor for survival. We find that intertwined with changing climate-society relationships are, historical caste privileges and changing generational relationships to land; the complicated engagements between indigeneity, communal sovereignty, and exclusionary institutional mandates; and life with ethnoreligious othering in an aqueous and geopolitically fluid borderland. Together these stories witness the relational social-ecological worlds of regional inhabitants, challenging their powerless and pejorative depictions through climate reductive framings. We conclude with a set of objectives to enable more hopeful and just adaptation futures.

The post Mountains of inequality: encountering the politics of climate adaptation across the Himalaya first appeared on Ecology & Society.

由于气候变化影响的加剧，人们广泛呼吁在喜马拉雅地区发展变革性适应知识和战略。但喜马拉雅气候知识生产的大部分内容都缺乏这种变革性思维，这些知识生产建立在环境决定论和技术管理对异常不稳定的演绎之上；倡导增加实地科学和专家驱动的项目；并仍然植根于民族国家的赤裸裸的现实。本文通过呈现作者与喜马拉雅社区一起工作中出现的“适应的日常故事”，为平衡气候变化适应的非政治化表现做出了丰富的学术贡献。在这项工作中，我们要问，喜马拉雅气候适应话语和政策的主题是谁？他们的故事如何帮助我们设想一种适应实践，通过突出社区和生态的交叉性和多元化，挑战区域危机叙事，并为气候还原论思想/规划提供替代方案？这些故事来自喜马拉雅山的三个地区：北阿坎德邦、昆布和阿萨姆邦，强调了适应的日常劳动及其与生存劳动的反复无常的关系。我们发现，与不断变化的气候-社会关系交织在一起的是历史上的种姓特权和不断变化的土地代际关系；原住民、社区主权和排他性机构任务之间的复杂关系；以及在水和地缘政治不稳定的边境地区与民族宗教的生活。这些故事共同见证了当地居民的社会生态世界，通过气候还原框架挑战了他们的无能为力和贬义的描述。最后，我们提出了一系列目标，以实现更有希望和公正的适应未来。

《不平等之山：喜马拉雅山气候适应政治》一书首次发表于《生态与社会》杂志上。