Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which social order is fabricated through provision of collective property rights. It focuses on the labor regimes and land-use practices of indigenous peoples in Venezuela's Andean highlands on the western frontier.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which social order is fabricated through the provision of collective property. Taking as its object the struggle for indigenous land rights in the sierra of Perijá, a mountainous frontier in western Venezuela, it investigates the co-production of ethnicity and sovereignty as well as how the efforts of Venezuela’s government to settle longstanding land claims and provide development aid to indigenous communities have resulted in a re-demarcation of the ethnic and territorial boundaries of the nation. In step with Article 119 of the Venezuelan constitution, which recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to traditional forms of land tenure, the Ministry of Agriculture has returned portions of former ancestral range to Andean indigenous communities. It has also provided technical assistance targeted at increasing agricultural productivity and preserving biodiversity in a national park which is Venezuela’s only UNESCO world heritage site. But while Venezuelan leaders laud indigenous peoples as a force for revitalizing the nation and its ecologies, my fieldwork in Perijá shows that their interventions negate the sovereignty of indigenous peoples over land and that the modes of labour which emerge alongside official cultural recognition inadvertently produce new forms of social exclusion and environmental degradation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how a Chinese village was transformed to be a technical end of an infrastructure, incorporating water projects, local bureaucrats, and villagers. Local uneven weather patterns are folded into the state's developmental agendas.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the interaction between a Chinese village and an extensive flood-control infrastructure situated in the Dongting basin, the middle section of Yangtze River in China. The village, which I pseudonymized as Hecun, is located along the border between the Dongting water network and a significant mountain range.

Firstly, I examine how the state scientifically identifies the upstream and middle stream’s weather patterns in the Yangtze area, i.e., the heavy storms, as the primary cause of flooding in the Dongting basin. Hecun is administratively and scientifically confined to flood-prone areas within the basin. A flood-control infrastructure is committed to address these weather-water issues. Secondly, I show that Hecun’s primary farming activity, rice cultivation, is primarily affected by droughts rather than floods. The specific geographical location of Hecun, being closer to the mountain range, accounts for this. But structurally, Hecun has significantly been involved in and works as a technical endpoint of the flood-control infrastructure system, incorporating water projects, local bureaucrats, and villagers. I argue that in this mountain-water borderland, local uneven weather patterns are folded into the state's macro-political and economic agendas and rendered invisible. Hecun villagers had to devise their own strategies to cope with the environmental challenges.

Paper short abstract:

The paper shows how three resident indigenous communities of Kangchenjunga mountain range have adapted to the eco-system allowing it to shape their culture/ social structure. This rendered the ecosystem sustainable.

Paper long abstract:

This paper articulates the historic process of adaptation of three indigenous communities residing in the mountainous ecosystem of Kangchenjunga range. These communities, namely the Lepchas, the Bhutias and the Limbus, have been believers of Nyingmapa subsect a fusion of Tibetan Buddhism & Naturism. It claims that the soci-cultural lives of these communities are organized around the Kangchenjunga mountain eco-system and hence, with ethnographic data, points out its embedded culture as well as an engraved social structure. This nature centricity of adaptation of the communities, is articulated through their, (i) flaunted identity, (ii) embedded culture (eco-cosmology) and (iii) engraved social structure (Stratification system). Having lived in the fragile eco-system for over 700 years, the communities have maintained the eco-system through their culturally inbuilt nature conservation practices and protection mechanisms. This gentle interaction with nature is guided by their belief system. Hence it is argued that their belief system: Nyingmapa sub-sect, founded on reverence to the sacred mountain has shaped their culture and social structure. Thus nature shaped the communities’ embedded culture/ structure, historically, instead of getting shaped by the communities’ sustenance efforts. Their subtler sustenance efforts do not disturb their organic link with nature.

Paper short abstract:

The paper mainly focuses on the relation of nature and culture through the indigenous knowledge and fishing practices.

Paper long abstract:

This paper mainly explores the intersection of indigenous knowledge and their Climate change adaptability through fishing. It includes changing nature of the fishing communities and riversides in Eastern Himalayan region. It highlights the importance of traditional ecological knowledge in sustaining fishing practices, managing local ecosystems, and fostering climate resilience. In the face of environmental and economic insecurity, this study also considers the community's efforts to diversify livelihoods while maintaining cultural ties to fishing. The findings underscore the critical role of indigenous practices in environmental conservation and the ongoing struggle to preserve cultural identity in the face of global change. This paper contributes to a broader understanding of how traditional knowledge can inform sustainable practices and adaptation strategies in vulnerable regions, offering insights into the future of climate-resilient livelihoods in the Eastern Himalayas. The large developmental strategies like bridge construction, policies also crucial for the study to explore the human and nature relationship.

Paper short abstract:

In spite of the cyclical-inevitable monsoon-induced urban floods jeopardizing the urban ecology in the hill valley city of Guwahati, stakeholder preparedness is untimely. The paper will contextualize the politics of waiting as a phenomenon and process to both understand and redress urban flooding

Paper long abstract:

News reports, social media platforms and public broadcasting services annually start circulating information on the plight of the cyclical-inevitable monsoon-induced urban flooding in the city of Guwahati, which jeopardizes its urban ecology, and it addresses the inability of the citizens and the city administration in timely being able to address the situation. Being physically located within hills, having river systems, wetlands and forests, Guwahati’s topography and geography make it inevitable to be receiving the spell of Indian monsoon rains, which is neither unexpected nor historically unprecedented. Since 1972, rampant urbanization, leading to a continual degradation of its urban ecology is the root cause of the urban flooding in Guwahati - a city also lacking pragmatic urban planning and a planned drainage system. The damage seems already to have been done, and it is now a question of the extent to which the city can be prepared to anticipate the onset of monsoons. The solutions provided are the need for the timely and efficient utilization and governance of resources and also of the need for coordination of efforts by various stakeholders. However, such anticipation, efficiency and coordination, is missing or untimely. Using archives, observations, narrative analysis and semi-structured interviews, this paper will contextualize the politics of waiting as a phenomenon and a process to both understand the nature of stakeholder preparedness cum mechanisms of governance vis-a-vis urban flooding in Guwahati and understand the bearing that the experiences of waiting would have in redressal and amelioration of this urban ecological concern.

Paper short abstract:

The global problems of resource depletion, poverty and conflict can be located in scale and complexity in commercial culture. contrary to it, the original affluent societies/indigenous communities customary laws in natural resource management can be seen as alternative for ecocide.

Paper long abstract:

The global problems of resource depletion, poverty and conflict are problems of scale and complexity that are amplified in a global-scale commercially dominated human society. These can be located in too many demands on nature- over consumption, shift away from renewable resources and commercial culture creating exceedingly complex and unstable ecological conditions. Contrary to it, the technologically simplest and ethnographically known original affluent societies or indigenous communities life of low density, domestically organized and customary laws in natural resource management offer many human advantages not obtained by urbanized societies. This paper is based on empirical study among the Gadabas, Parajas and Bondos hill tribes in Odisha to compare land management and wasteland cultivation under statute and customary laws. It found that cultural principles of subsidiarity and heterogeneity, small population size and scale shapes the distribution of wealth, power and opportunity unlike urban societies where few people make decisions. It found that the customary laws are having the provision of self governing strategies, oppose the idea of property, and recognizes that natural resources management is adapted to local ecosystems. Hence, the destruction of nature or ecocide can be controlled and social and natural sustainability can be achieved. Hence, applications of customary laws in natural resource management can be the only alternative to ecocide, the world is facing today.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents ethnographic fieldwork exploring how climate change induced snow loss disrupts the alpine water cycle that traditional livestock farming in Switzerland depends on. It highlights farmers' resilience and the need for integrating indigenous knowledge of the mountains into policy.

Paper long abstract:

The implications of climate change on alpine landscapes, rapidly warming temperatures and unpredictable precipitation, have been prominently discussed globally, with Switzerland at the forefront. In this paper, I present ethnographic fieldwork with Swiss farmers focussing on the impacts of snow disappearing from alpine agriculture. While the implications of snow disappearing from tourism and winter sport have been widely discussed, the implications of a lack of snow in alpine livestock farming have yet to be foregrounded. Snow is crucial not only as a winter surface but as water storage that sustains the vertical mountainous landscape all year-round. The increasing absence and unpredictability of snow disrupt traditional three-stage farming practices, in which livestock are moved up the mountain along the snow line. These altered water cycles render parts of the landscape unproductive. I discuss Swiss farmers’ resilience to hostile weather conditions, adaptation strategies to changing landscapes, and future imaginaries of agriculture after snow. Finally, I address the challenges alpine farmers face in competition for water with winter tourism and the hydro-energy sector, which generates nearly 60% of Swiss energy. The paper highlights the importance of integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and landscape understanding into political dialogues to address the impacts of climate change and develop strategies that support all stakeholders in the alpine region.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores evolving local knowledge in Ziro Valley, highlighting how interventions reshape Apatani climate worlds and cosmologies which challenge dominant mono-epistemic views of climate change and resilience

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the evolving realities in Ziro Valley, challenging the dominant representation of the Apatanis as custodians of traditional agriculture and natural resource management. Engaging critically with climate change discourse that valorizes indigenous adaptive capabilities and resilience, the study explores how local knowledge is reshaped through state-led and technical interventions. Neocolonial and neoliberal projects, such as infrastructural expansion and tourism, embed environmental issues into a socio-technical assemblage that redefines the Apatanis’ climate worlds/cosmology. Simultaneously, cosmological practices of the ageing population reveal alternative understandings of ecological transformations, such as perceiving mountains as ‘earth-beings.’

By juxtaposing these facets, the paper argues for a nuanced understanding of how local communities enact and make sense of their ontological realities. Recognizing local knowledge as dynamic and evolving challenges the mono-epistemic view of climate change as a singular, scientifically defined global crisis. Instead, it foregrounds the multiplicity of ontologies that characterize and experience climate change. This study thus opens a dialogue to register diverse enactments of climate realities, emphasizing the interplay between geography, social position, and the evolving knowledge systems of local communities.