In this article, we use a political economic analysis in arguing that climate change risks and vulnerabilities are often produced and sustained through inappropriate, loosely designed and socially contested institutional mechanisms. Using ethnography, we contribute to the existing social science scholarship on climate vulnerability and risk by focusing on a political economic analysis of how risks are framed and responded at local institutional levels in the Indian Sundarbans. Our paper offers place-based nuances of climate politics to show how local institutions are characterised by power relations, economic incentives and political influences while facilitating and deploying climate risk management strategies. Empirical findings from our study highlight that neoliberal approaches to climate risk management facilitated by local institutions reveal predominant market mechanisms, patron–clientele relations and technologically engineered solutions to create local climate economies. From our findings, we conclude that political economy of climate change can explain why and how adaptation policies become ineffective in everyday experiences of precarious living.
AdgerWN (2003) Social aspects of adaptive capacity. In: Smith JB, Klein RJT and Huq S (eds) Climate Change, Adaptive Capacity and Development. London: Imperial College Press, pp. 29–49.
2.
AdgerWN (2006) Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change16(3): 268–281.
3.
AdgerWNBenjaminsenTABrownK, et al. (2001) Advancing a political ecology of global environmental discourses. Development and Change32(4): 681–715.
4.
AdgerWNKellyPM (1999) Social vulnerability to climate change and the architecture of entitlements. Migration and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change4: 253–266.
5.
AgrawalA (2008) The Role of Local Institutions in Adaptation to Climate Change. Washington, DC: World Bank.
6.
BanerjeeRKamandaJBantilanC, et al. (2012) Exploring the relationship between local institutions in SAT India and adaptation to climate variability. Natural Hazards65: 1443–1464.
7.
BarnettJ (2020) Global environmental change II: Political economies of vulnerability to climate change. Progress in Human Geography44(6): 1172–1184.
8.
BhattacharyaSMukherjeeJBanerjiD, et al. (2024) (En)countering an urban riverscape: ethno-graphic explorations on the Adi Ganga. Cities151: 105105.
9.
BirkenholtzT (2012) Network political ecology: Method and theory in climate change vulnerability and adaptation research. Progress in Human Geography36(3): 295–315.
10.
BiswasDSenA (2024) An analysis of local political forces around the management of climate-change led disasters in the Indian Sundarbans. Asian Journal of Social Science52(2): 63–75.
11.
BlaikiePCannonTDavisI, et al. (1994) At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters. London: Routledge.
12.
ChacravertiS (2014) The Sundarbans Fishers: Coping in an Overly Stressed Mangrove Estuary. Chennai: International Collective in Support of Fishworkers.
13.
ChuEK (2018) Urban climate adaptation and the reshaping of state-society relations: the politics of community knowledge and mobilization in Indore, India. Urban Studies55(8): 1766–1782.
14.
CrabtreeA (2018) Capabilities, ethics and disaster. In: O’MathúnaDPDranseikaVGordijnB (eds) Disasters: Core Concepts and Ethical Theories. Switzerland: Springer Nature, pp.175–187.
15.
DandaAAGhoshNBandyopadhyayJ, et al. (2019) Managed retreat: adaptation to climate change in the Sundarbans ecoregion in the Bengal Delta. Journal of the Indian Ocean Region15(3): 317–335.
16.
DavoudiS (2017) Self-reliant resiliency and neoliberal mentality. In: TrellE-MRestemeyerBBakemaMMvan HovenB (eds) Governing for Resilience in Vulnerable Places. Oxon: Routledge, pp.1–6.
17.
DewanC (2020) ‘Climate change as a spice’: Brokering environmental knowledge in Bangladesh’s development industry. Ethnos87(3): 538–559.
18.
DewanC (2023) Toxic residues in fluid commons: More-than-economic dispossession and shipbreaking in coastal Bangladesh. Ethnos89(3): 459–479.
19.
DietrichAS (2021) Pollution, health, and disaster: Emerging contributions in ethnographic research. Environment and Society12(1): 44–65.
20.
DrèzeJSenA (1989) Hunger and Public Action. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
21.
EriksenSHLindJ (2009) Adaptation as a political process: adjusting to drought and conflict in Kenya’s drylands. Environmental Management43(5): 817–835.
22.
EriksenSHNightingaleAJEakinH (2015) Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation. Global Environmental Change35: 523–533.
23.
FaulknerJPMurphyEScottM (2020) Developing a holistic ‘vulnerability-resilience’ model for local and regional development. European Planning Studies28(12): 2330–2347.
24.
ForsythT (2003) Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science. London: Routledge.
25.
FüsselHM (2007) Vulnerability: A generally applicable conceptual framework for climate change research. Global Environmental Change17(2): 155–167.
26.
FüsselHMKleinRJ (2006) Climate change vulnerability assessments: An evolution of conceptual thinking. Climatic Change75(3): 301–329.
27.
GhimireKMVikasM (2012) Climate change–impact on the Sundarbans, a case study. International Scientific Journal: Environmental Science2(1): 7–15.
28.
GhoshP (2014) Subsistence and biodiversity conservation in the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, West Bengal, India. Theses and Dissertations–Geography. University of Kentucky, USA.
29.
HedlundJ (2023) The politics of climate risk assessment. NPJ Climate Action2(1): 48.
30.
HulmeM (2011) Reducing the future to climate: a story of climate determinism and reductionism. Osiris26(1): 245–266.
31.
JalaisA (2010) Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans. New Delhi: Routledge.
32.
JeppersonRLMeyerJW (2021) Institutional Theory: The Cultural Construction of Organizations, States, and Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
JosephJ (2013) Resilience as embedded neoliberalism: A governmentality approach. Resilience1(1): 38–52.
34.
KellyPMAdgerWN (2000) Theory and practice in assessing vulnerability to climate change and facilitating adaptation. Climatic Change47(4): 325–352.
35.
LounsburyM (2022) Review of Ronald L. Jepperson and John W. Meyer: institutional theory: the cultural construction of organizations, states, and identities. Administrative Science Quarterly67(1): NP9–NP11.
36.
MadhanagopalD (2023) Local Adaptation to Climate Change in South Asia: Challenges and the Future in the Tsunami Hit Coastal Regions. Oxon and New York: Routledge.
37.
MukhopadhyayA (2009) On the wrong side of the fence: embankment, people and social justice in the Sundarbans. In: BosePKDasSK (eds) Social Justice and Enlightenment. New Delhi: Sage, pp.118–152.
38.
MukhopadhyayA (2016) Living with Disasters: Communities and Development in the Indian Sundarbans. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
39.
NightingaleAJEriksenSTaylorM, et al. (2019) Beyond technical fixes: Climate solutions and the great derangement. Climate and Development12(4): 343–352.
40.
O’BrienKEriksenSNygaardLP, et al. (2007) Why different interpretations of vulnerability matter in climate change discourses. Climate Policy7(1): 73–88.
41.
O’BrienKLeichenkoRKelkarU, et al. (2004) Mapping vulnerability to multiple stressors: climate change and globalization in India. Global Environmental Change14(4): 303–313.
42.
PaavolaJAdgerWN (2002) Justice and adaptation to climate change. Working Paper, 23. Norwich: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
43.
PaprockiK (2018) Threatening dystopias: Development and adaptation regimes in Bangladesh. Annals of the American Association of Geographers108(4): 955–973.
44.
RibotJC (1995) The causal structure of vulnerability: Its application to climate impact analysis. GeoJournal35(2): 119–122.
45.
RibotJC (2010) Vulnerability does not fall from the sky: Toward multiscale, pro-poor climate policy. In: MearnsRNortonA (eds) Social Dimensions of Climate Change: Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World. Washington, DC: The World Bank, pp.47–74.
46.
RibotJC (2011) Vulnerability before adaptation: Toward transformative climate action. Global Environmental Change21(4): 1160–1162.
47.
RibotJC (2014) Cause and response: Vulnerability and climate in the Anthropocene. The Journal of Peasant Studies41(5): 667–705.
48.
RibotJCPelusoNL (2003) A theory of access. Rural Sociology68(2): 153–181.
49.
RoyMVenemaHD (2002) Reducing risk and vulnerability to climate change in India: The capabilities approach. Gender and Development10(2): 78–83.
50.
RoySSGhoshTHewavithanaDK (2024) Transformation of coastal wetlands in the Sundarban Delta (1999–2020). Environmental Monitoring and Assessment196(8): 758.
51.
SajaAAGoonetillekeATeoM, et al. (2019) A critical review of social resilience assessment frameworks in disaster management. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction35: 101096.
52.
SenA (1981) Ingredients of famine analysis: availability and entitlements. The Quarterly Journal of Economics96(3): 433–464.
53.
SenA (2022) A Political Ecology of Forest Conservation in India: Communities, Wildlife and the State. Oxon: Routledge.
54.
SenAPattanaikS (2019) A paradox of the ‘community’: Contemporary processes of participatory forest conservation in the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) region of West Bengal. Environmental Sociology5(1): 33–46.
55.
SmitBPilifosovaO (2003) From adaptation to adaptive capacity and vulnerability reduction. In: Smith JB, Klein RJT and Huq S (eds) Climate Change, Adaptive Capacity and Development. London: Imperial College Press, pp. 9–28.
56.
SmitBWandelJ (2006) Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Global Environmental Change16(3): 282–292.
57.
SmuckerTAWisnerBMascarenhasA, et al. (2015) Differentiated livelihoods, local institutions, and the adaptation imperative: Assessing climate change adaptation policy in Tanzania. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences59: 39–50.
58.
SrivastavaSMehtaLAdamHN (2022a) Climate change and uncertainty: Politics and perspectives. In: MehtaLAdamHNSrivastavaS (eds) The Politics of Climate Change and Uncertainty in India. Oxon: Routledge, pp.1–26.
59.
SrivastavaSMehtaLNaessLO, et al. (2022b) Between the market and climate change: Uncertainty and transformation in Kutch. In: MehtaLAdamHNSrivastavaS (eds) The Politics of Climate Change and Uncertainty in India. Oxon: Routledge, pp.83–106.
60.
TaylorM (2015) The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation; Livelihoods, Agrarian Change and the Conflicts of Development. Oxon: Routledge.
61.
TaylorMBhasmeS (2021) Between deficit rains and surplus populations: The political ecology of a climate resilient village in South India. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences126: 431–440.
62.
TurnerBLMatsonPAMcCarthyJJ, et al. (2003) Illustrating the coupled human–environment system for vulnerability analysis: three case studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences100(14): 8080–8085.
63.
WarnerBPChildersDLKuzdasC, et al. (2018) Smallholder adaptation to drought in Costa Rica's crony capitalist rice economy. Development and Change49(6): 1392–1421.
64.
WattsM (1983) On the poverty of theory: Natural hazards research in context. In: Hewitt K (ed) Interpretations of Calamity from the Perspective of Human Ecology. London: Allen and Unwin, pp. 231–262.
65.
WattsMJBohleHG (1993) The space of vulnerability: The causal structure of hunger and famine. Progress in Human Geography17(1): 43–67.
66.
WilkinsonE (2012) Transforming Disaster Risk Management: A Political Economy Approach. London: Overseas Development Institute.
