Paper short abstract:

Meanings of land and situated histories to foreground new insights into the method of understanding the interrelations between climate change, migration and immobility.

Paper long abstract:

I introduce India’s Kuttanad in Kerala, whose unique wetland region is famous for its below-sea-level paddy farming to locate the interrelations of climate change, migration and immobility. Mobilizing Escobar (2019)’s ‘relational ontologies’ is essential to explore how these three realms are entangled, interactive and contested within, but also with other multiple ‘contemporaneous’ spaces (Massey 2005).

Existing narratives on the agricultural past of Kuttanadu intersect with its indigenous adaptive practices to environmental challenges. In recognition of such farming, this site was declared a Globally significant Agricultural Heritage System (GIAS) by the United Nations in 2013. However, changing rainfall patterns, floods and rising sea levels create challenges for the local groups, forcing them to migrate. Though many migrated to varied ‘safer’ places, many families stayed back, unwilling to relocate. Why do they not want to migrate? Are meanings of land more than just a commodity? Are they immobile because various factors restrict their movement? Or do they have the agency to adapt to climate change?

My case study mobilizes the politics of immobility, memory, territorial effect, and uneven geographies posed by sinking lands. My analytics helps unpack the multilayered challenges of climate change, situated in local histories and politics of various constellations of groups. Understanding these help explore the possibilities of policies as a practiced space to construct frames for future developments. Doing so acknowledges diverse practices, memories, imaginations, and the politics of knowledge production in a relational way to invent and reinvent new ways of decision-making from the ground.