Holistically Understanding and Enhancing the Adaptation of Remote High-Mountain Communities to Hydrometeorological Extremes
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Holistically understanding and enhancing the adaptation of remote high-mountain communities to hydrometeorological extremes and associated geohazards in a changing climate by Vaibhav Kaul A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography Faculty of Social Sciences The University of Sheffield June 2019 Abstract In rapidly warming high-mountain environments, extreme precipitation events commonly generate extensive slope failures, flash floods and glacier-related hazards, which can be devastating to resident communities. This interdisciplinary project seeks to holistically understand human engagement with the severe risks arising from such geohazards in the wake of recent climatic change and also contemporaneous processes of social change. Focusing on remote rural communities in two monsoon- affected river basins in the Indian High Himalaya, the study uses extended ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative local-scale geomorphological observations, and quantitative hydroclimatological analyses to assess current and future environmental risks as well as local understandings and cultural models of those risks, community resilience, and adaptive capacity. The findings are synthesised to devise a strategic framework for culturally responsive action to protect and improve lives and livelihoods. The dissertation places ontologically disparate local/traditional and Western/modern scientific understandings of climate-related geohazards into the context of each other, allowing the unique insights offered by each to be appreciated against the backdrop of the other. It uses shared geographies to integrate the seemingly irreconcilable knowledge systems, both spatially and conceptually. The practical outcome of this epistemic synthesis is that it enriches earth science-based hazard assessments with ethnographically robust emic perspectives on geomorphic processes, providing external development practitioners, planners and policymakers with a genuine sense of lived experiences of change and extremes in the physical environment. Much of the ethnography intensively examines the fascinating dimension of indigenous geographical knowledges that transcends the materiality of the environment and the hazards that operate in it. This includes explorations of folkloristic models of landscape dynamics that lend form and spatiality to traditional metaphysical convictions, spiritualities, moralities, and emotionalities associated with geohazards operating within a certain social change context. By engaging with these commonly overlooked but behaviourally potent aspects of human-environment relationships, the epistemology of hazards developed in the dissertation can aid in developing more culturally compatible, and therefore potentially more efficacious, strategies for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in remote high-mountain settings across the Himalaya and elsewhere in the Global South. Acknowledgements I am infinitely grateful that my doctoral project was hosted by as happy and hearty an institution as The University of Sheffield, and that it was supervised by the profoundly wise, benevolent and dedicated Dr Matthew Watson, Dr Julie Jones and Dr Darrel Swift, all of whom I have come to hold in the highest esteem. As my prime overseer, guide and teacher, Dr Watson has shown remarkable thoughtfulness, poise and magnanimity. My deepest thanks are due also to each and every one of my present and former colleagues, mentors, and friends within and beyond the Department of Geography. This dissertation could not have been produced without the Upper Lāchen Chú and the Upper Mandākinī communities’ graciousness in allowing me to explore their rich and complex worlds of experience; nor would it have come about without the exceedingly generous financial support provided by the University of Sheffield through the Vice Chancellor’s Indian Scholarship (2014-2017), by the Dudley Stamp Memorial Fund and the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) through the Dudley Stamp Memorial Award (2015), and by the Department of Geography at The University of Sheffield, where I was nurtured by the Culture, Space and Difference (CSD), Ice and Climate Research at Sheffield (ICERS), and Landscape Dynamics research clusters as well as the multi-institutional White Rose Social Science Doctoral Training Centre. I am also indebted to the following institutions and programmes for the research outreach opportunities or data support they have been kind enough to provide: The University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind, HRH The Princess Royal, the Sheffield Institute for International Development, Geography Outdoors (Royal Geographical Society with IBG), the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, the World Meteorological Organization, the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council’s Learning on Screen Awards, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Kumaon University, the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme, the India Meteorological Department, and the India Habitat Centre. Finally, I must humbly acknowledge that the vital force behind all my work is a constant supply of deep love and inspiration from nature, especially shimmering snows and cirrus-streaked skies, and from my marvellous family, clan, ancestors, elders (including my loving nanny and many adoptive Himalayan grannies), teachers (three from kindergarten, ninety-nine from four schools, thirty-three from three universities, and more than a hundred others), friends and guardian angels (at least twenty-two women, twenty men, twelve larches, nine birches, three grand cedars, three dozen sheep, three dozen swans, three children, three infants, and one foetus), philosophical companions (especially a bewitching young lady whom I have never met), creative partners, musical muses, fellow mountain lovers, saints, doctors, and deities – both gentle and fierce. I dedicate this dissertation to all of them, as also to the earnest labours of my truly good and mountain-hearted parents Vandita and Vivek, the subtle splendour of my sagacious-smiled sister Vani, and the gorgeousness of my grandparents and great-grandparents (including a gallant great-grandfather whose titanic thesis on alkaline soils was confiscated by a rather acidic British colonial government as punishment for his participation in the 1930s Indian freedom movement). May they all forgive me if I have failed them! And thanks ever be unto my beloved Himalaya, my only home! That reminds me of a beautiful song by James Copeland: No land's ever claimed me, Tho' far I did roam, For these are my mountains, And I have come home! Table of Contents Chapter 1: Research context and intent . 1 Chapter 2: Theoretical foundations and literature review . 7 2.1. Hydrometeorologically triggered geohazards in a changing climate . 7 2.1.1. Modern/Western scientific knowledge . 7 2.1.2. Missing local epistemologies: The need for “two-eyed seeing” . 20 2.2. Vulnerability, resilience, adaptation, and risk reduction . 22 2.2.1. Key concepts . 23 2.2.2. Combining vulnerability and resilience thinking for adaptation . 25 2.2.3. Towards a holistic strategy for adaptation and risk reduction . 28 Chapter 3: Methodology . 31 3.1. Introduction . 31 3.2. Earth science methods . 38 3.2.1. Climatic change assessment . 38 3.2.2. Geohazard assessment . 41 3.3. Social science methods . 42 3.3.1. Ethnographic fieldwork: Community interviews and participant observation . 42 3.3.2. Focus group discussions, elite interviews, and participatory mapping . 52 3.3.3. Strategic planning . 53 3.4. Combining multiple methods and perspectives . 54 Chapter 4: Exploring experiences of climatic change . 55 4.1. How has the climate changed? . 56 4.1.1. Temperature . 58 4.1.2. Precipitation . 60 4.1.3. Summary of climatic changes . 75 4.2. How do these changes matter? . 76 4.2.1. More extreme monsoon precipitation . 76 4.2.2. Drier winters . 77 4.2.3. Cultural snowless-ness . 78 4.3. Why is the climate changing? . 78 4.3.1. Explanations from the ULC community . 79 4.3.2. Explanations from the UM community . 82 4.4. Conclusion . 85 Chapter 5: Examining imaginations of hazards . 86 5.1. Metaphysical backdrop . 87 5.2. Insights from the Upper Lāchen Chú Valley . 88 5.3. Insights from the Upper Mandākinī Valley . 113 5.4. Towards a more efficacious epistemology of hazards . 148 Chapter 6: Appraising adaptive capacity . 150 6.1. Senses of adaptive capacity: Metaphysical insights . 151 6.1.1. Insights from the Upper Lāchen Chú Valley . 151 6.1.2. Insights from the Upper Mandākinī Valley . 155 6.2. Worldly adaptive capacity: Practical appraisals . 161 6.2.1. Social factors . 161 6.2.2. Economic factors . 165 6.2.3. Logistical factors . ..