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This study explores how social capital strengthens adaptive capacities in low-income, informal migrant settlements in Bengaluru. Informal networks and mutual aid augment resilience, enhance wellbeing and reduce vulnerabilities, amid precarious living conditions and rising climate risks.

Paper long abstract

Historically, people have been migrating to cities for better incomes, opportunities, and quality of life. Migration is also crucial for reducing risks associated with climate change impacts. However, climate change and exclusionary urbanisation have altered migration conditions, exacerbating vulnerabilities, especially for marginalised and low-income communities in destination cities.

Building on existing literature, the ongoing study explores the relationship between social capital and adaptive capacity in low-income migrant settlements in Bengaluru, India. Migration is integral to Bengaluru’s economy, with nearly half the city’s population comprising migrants, many of whom live in low-income, informal settlements exposed to climate risks, insecure housing, limited services, and precarious livelihoods. As rising temperatures, water scarcity, and recurrent flooding intersect with uncertain living conditions, migrants experience compounding vulnerability.

The ongoing study draws on comparative research across informal migrant settlements in Bengaluru, selected based on their exposure to climate risks. The fieldwork comprises settlement scoping and profiling, semi-structured interviews, and detailed life history interviews. The study examines how informal networks, everyday relationships, and systems of mutual support shape migrants’ ability to navigate unfamiliar urban destinations and respond to climate change impacts. While these relational practices shaped by networks, norms and trust play a vital role in strengthening wellbeing and fostering resilience, enabling households to respond to, and cope with short-term risks and challenges - their contribution to longer-term, anticipatory, or transformative forms of adaptation remains uneven and closely linked to the distinct social dynamics and, the characteristics and histories of the settlements within which they are shaped.

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This paper examines the collaborative and conflicting interactions between formal and informal gendered institutions and their configuration of women’s adaptive decisions. It interrogates adaptation decisions with respect to coping strategies, implementation modalities and adaptation intensity.

Paper long abstract

Women farmers make adaptation decisions within complex gendered institutional contexts consisting of formal and informal structures. Formal institutions such as laws, regulations, policies and informal systems of norms, customs, and social expectations impact women’s climate response. The gendered effect of institutions on climate adaptation is acknowledged in previous scholarship however, the ways in which formal and informal gendered institutions interact and configure women’s adaptive choices remain insufficiently explored. This paper examines the collaborative and conflicting interactions between formal and informal gendered institutions and their configuration of women’s adaptation decisions. Fieldwork was undertaken in Uganda, using qualitative participatory methods to generate study results. Helmke and Levitsky’s (2004) categorisation of formal and informal institutional interactions – complementary, accommodation, competition and substitution – was adopted to guide the analysis of gendered institutional interactions. Results demonstrate that constraints to women’s climate adaptation – disparities in resource access and control, responsibilities and decision-making power – are systemically reinforced and reproduced through competition and accommodation interactions. Resultantly, women’s adaptation options have been narrowed and confined to traditional strategies which are often inappropriately implemented and with limited intensity. These limitations undermine the effectiveness of the traditional adaptation strategies in moderating climate risks. The paper advances a systemic approach to understanding the constraints that women confront in climate adaptation. This expands analysis beyond individual-level vulnerabilities and reveals broader socio-political systems that shape adaptive capacities. It further deepens theorisation on gendered adaptation to incorporate multi-scalar power structures and their effect on gender equity in climate adaptation.

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The paper shows how gendered collective agency among displaced Rohingya shapes climate justice by highlighting women’s environmental roles, community resilience, and grassroots action, arguing that supporting local knowledge and solidarity is vital for equitable, sustainable futures.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how gendered collective agency within Rohingya displacement settings shapes emerging pathways toward climate justice and transformative futures. Although Rohingya communities in Bangladesh face overlapping crises from environmental fragility and recurrent climate-induced hazards to protracted statelessness and restricted mobility, grassroots practices of solidarity and everyday coping strategies are generating alternative visions of progress that challenge dominant humanitarian and state-led narratives. Climate justice debates often frame refugee populations as passive victims of environmental vulnerability; however, a closer look at gendered roles, informal leadership, and community-driven initiatives reveals a more dynamic landscape of resilience and political possibility. Drawing on secondary literature, the analysis highlights how Rohingya women, despite structural constraints, have begun to mobilize around environmental risks, water scarcity, sustainable energy use, and community well-being. Their involvement in informal advocacy, mutual aid networks, and social learning circles demonstrates the potential of gendered collective action to reconfigure relationships with humanitarian actors and strengthen community adaptability in the face of intensifying climate pressures. Men and youth also contribute to this collective environmental governance through volunteer groups, disaster preparedness activities, and participatory risk mapping. These localised practices not only mitigate immediate climate impacts but also articulate broader claims to dignity, rights, and future-making. By connecting gender, displacement, and climate justice, the paper shows how Rohingya women’s grassroots agency shapes visions of equitable and inclusive futures, arguing that supporting gendered collective action is vital for climate justice frameworks that prioritise the lived realities of marginalized displaced communities.

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Climate-stressed, drought prone Marathwada faces debt, low yields and farmer suicides, leaving widows burdened. Using participatory action research, the study maps power structures shaping their lives and shows how collective organising helps them access welfare schemes and alternative livelihoods.

Paper long abstract

The Marathwada region in Maharashtra (India), long marked by drought, now faces intensifies stress due to climate change. Declining water tables, erratic rainfalls, and the heavy dependence of agriculture on seasonal rains have deepened rural distress, leading to persistent indebtedness, low yields, and a tragically hight incidence of farmer suicides. This crisis leaves behind a largely overlooked group - the widows of farmers, who solely bear responsibility of their families while navigating social, economic, and administrative challenges.

This paper draws upon participatory-action based research conducted with farm widows in the Latur and Osmanabad districts to understand the power structures shaping their lived realities. Using Batliwala's (2018) framework of social power, examining 'who gets what, who does what, who decides what, and who sets the agenda', the study shows how widows often find themselves positioned within relationships of 'power over', with limited agency in community, household, and the state interactions. While some women exercise agency in daily negotiations with local actors, they consistently experience powerlessness when dealing with the state. Most struggle to access welfare schemes due to complex bureaucratic demands of documentation. resulting in exclusion from benefits designed for them.

The second part of paper explores efforts to strengthen the women's 'power within', 'power to', and 'power with' through collective processes that emerged during the research. These collective engagements help widows better understand their rights, articulate demands, and pursue transitions from farm-based to non-farm livelihoods. The study shows how participatory action research can foster women's agency in addressing compounded vulnerabilities.

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Climate change impacts in the Indian Himalayas are shaping environmental and livelihood challenges to women. Drawing from ethnographic case studies, this paper aims to provide an alternative to the narrative of women as victims of climate change and presents women as solution-oriented change makers.

Paper long abstract

Climate change in the Indian Himalayan region is a lived reality which is evident in erratic rainfall and drying springs, leading to erosion of livelihoods, abandoned agricultural fields, and intensified rural out-migration. These climatic challenges have posed both environmental and livelihood challenges to mountain women. Based on qualitative empirical case studies from multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Garhwal Himalayas (Uttarakhand, India), this paper focuses on women’s lived experiences and practices at Marorra Forest Farm and Uffrainkhal’s community forest. It follows a qualitative approach, which involves participant observation, semi-structured life-history interviews, and focus group discussions, with women’s experiences of collective adaptation strategies.

The analysis adopts the framework of Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) and a climate justice lens to comprehend women's collective efforts in the Garhwal Himalayas. It narrates transformative women-led initiatives at Marorra in regenerative farming, forest management, and creating sustainable livelihoods, complemented by the case from forests of Uffrainkhal as a historically initiated ‘forests of water’, whose long-term benefits from afforestation, groundwater recharge, and water security are collectively experienced and narrated by local communities even decades later. This paper illustrates the role of women through their practices in the forests and farms, which shape access, control over resources, and local decision-making. Further, it aims to provide an alternative to the prevailing dominant narrative of women as victims of climate change and presents women as solution-oriented change makers. The findings contribute to broader debates on gender-climate nexus, nature-based solutions, and climate justice derived from women's ecological awareness, ecological labour, and knowledge.

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This paper examines households' capacity to cope with with weather shocks by exploring the roles of informal networks and intrahousehold farm decision-making in relation welfare. Focusing on Tanzania, this paper uses climate data merged with household and plot-level in the empirical analysis.

Paper long abstract

In many developing countries, households are engaged in informal networks or associations for a number of reasons such as providing social support. Also, among households, there are variations in intrahousehold farm decision-making power, which could result in gender variation in land rights, ownership, and control. Households informal networks or associations and intrahousehold farm decision-making power could play have effects in the households' capacity to mitigate or cope with weather shocks. In spite of the relevance of informal networks and intrahousehold decision-making power in climate resilience, studies on how gender differences in informal networks and intrahousehold farm decision-making power affect household welfare have received limited attention in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. This study, therefore, examines the relationship between gender differences in informal networks and intrahousehold farm decision-making on household welfare among smallholder farmers in Tanzania. Using climate date, household-level and plot-level data from the Tanzanian National Panel Surveys and fixed effect regressions, the results of the study indicate that informal networks and intrahousehold decision-making power matter for household capacity to cope with climate risks. The findings of this study support the assertions that informal networks and the characteristics of plot managers play important roles in sustainable livelihoods and socio-economic inequalities.

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In Colombia and Guinea Bissau, agribusiness entangled with conflict-ridden politics compound global climate change drivers, displacing women farmers into cities. We explore how urban gendered solidarities in cooperative kitchens and gardens sustain nutrition, belonging and climate-just resilience.

Paper long abstract

In Colombia and Guinea-Bissau, a complex nexus of agribusiness, political instability and, in Colombia, paramilitary violence compounds global climate change drivers, intensifying flooding, salinisation, warming and desertification. This forces women farmers into cities, where they organise cooperative restaurants and seasoning gardens that support diverse, nutritious diets, conserve biodiversity and rebuild identity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork by Vargas Arana in Medellín and Pontinta in Bissau, we analyse women’s cooperatives in each site, showing that solidarities form a gendered pathway to climate-just urban resilience.

Guinea-Bissau and Colombia are connected by centuries-old Atlantic crop exchanges that moved African staples such as rice, plantain and yam westwards and American crops including cassava, maize, beans and peanuts into West Africa. Examining how displaced women in Bissau and in Afro-Colombian Medellín rework these circulating foods offers a rare view of related gendered food cultures that foster collective resilience and support nutrition under climatic and political–economic threats.

We advance climate-justice debates from an intersectional perspective. Studies have shown that environmental changes disproportionately affect Black populations. Yet vulnerability is not uniform as gender inequalities mediate exposures and responses. Agribusinesses externalise social-ecological costs, and Black women small-scale farmers bear the heaviest impacts. Through cooperative kitchens and seasoning gardens, these women contest marginalisation by strengthening nutrition, belonging and income. We argue that food cooperatives function as grassroots climate-justice infrastructures that remain voiceless in policy design, suggesting that urban climate adaptation policies will benefit from recognising these women-led systems as resilience assets for more equitable and nutritionally diverse urban futures.

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This paper examines how women’s collective action through Self-Help Groups in a semi-arid Indian village reshapes power relations and gender norms. Using social network analysis, it shows how cohesion strengthens women’s agency, leadership, and collective voice for inclusive rural futures.

Paper long abstract

Understanding how formal and informal networks shape social capital is critical for analysing gendered pathways of empowerment, technology adoption, and access to resources in rural agrarian contexts. This paper examines women’s collective action through Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in Aurepalle village, using social network analysis to explore how grassroots institutions enable agency, solidarity, and inclusive development outcomes. Framed within debates on gender collective action and climate justice, the study situates SHGs as relational spaces through which women negotiate power, mobilise assets, and articulate alternative visions of progress.

The findings show that SHGs function not only as economic platforms but also as social and political institutions that strengthen women’s participation in decision-making across household, community, and institutional domains. When organised in a truly participatory manner and supported through enabling partnerships, SHGs help women shift from marginalised positions towards active roles as change agents and participating citizens. Mapping the network architecture of men and women farmers reveals how collective action reshapes flows of information, resources, and influence, while also identifying socially disconnected individuals and households requiring targeted inclusion strategies. The analysis further demonstrates that network structures play a crucial role in the diffusion of innovations and social learning processes, highlighting the importance of collective platforms for technology uptake and rural development interventions.

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This paper examines intersectional and decolonial feminist epistemologies as critical alternatives to hegemonic development models, arguing that the climate crisis is also an epistemic and civilizational crisis rooted in coloniality, patriarchy, and global capitalism.

Paper long abstract

This paper analyzes intersectional and decolonial feminist epistemologies as critical alternatives to modern rationality and hegemonic development paradigms, highlighting their contributions to plural and situated approaches to climate justice. It advances the argument that the contemporary ecological crisis is also an epistemic and civilizational crisis, rooted in the coloniality of power, knowledge, being, and gender that sustains patriarchy, racism, and global capitalism.

Using a qualitative and interdisciplinary approach grounded in feminist, decolonial, and Southern scholarship, the paper engages with authors such as María Lugones, Carla Akotirene, Vandana Shiva, Maria Mies, Ailton Krenak, Alberto Acosta, and Adriana Guzmán. It demonstrates how intersectional feminism and ecofeminism challenge the separation between humanity and nature by proposing ethical frameworks based on care, reciprocity, and interdependence.

The analysis highlights Southern epistemologies and cosmovisions, such as Buen Vivir, the ethics of belonging, and feminist community practices, as transformative horizons capable of confronting epistemicide and reimagining progress beyond extractivist and productivist logics. Particular attention is given to women’s grassroots practices and community-based resistances, which articulate body, territory, and knowledge as inseparable dimensions of climate justice.

The paper concludes that addressing the climate crisis requires a decolonial civilizational shift, in which feminist epistemologies and situated practices emerge not only as forms of resistance but as concrete pathways toward transformative futures grounded in solidarity, plurality, and the affirmation of life.

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The paper examines how social solidarity shapes climate adaptation in agrarian vulnerability. Focusing on women’s Kudumbashree farming collectives in climate-sensitive Wayanad, Kerala, it explores gendered grassroots practices and contributes to debates on climate justice and inclusive adaptation.

Paper long abstract

Climate change is intensifying agrarian distress and livelihood insecurity across rural India, reshaping the gendered organisation of agricultural labour, care, and resource access. In Kerala, these dynamics intersect with the feminisation of agriculture driven by male outmigration, fragmented landholdings, and welfare-oriented development frameworks. This paper examines how social solidarity and women’s collective action mediate climate adaptation in contexts of agrarian and ecological vulnerability, focusing on Kudumbashree’s collective farming initiatives in the climate-sensitive district of Wayanad.

Located in the ecologically fragile Western Ghats, Wayanad has experienced increasing climate variability, including erratic monsoons and unseasonal rainfall, disproportionately affecting women who shoulder agricultural work alongside unpaid care responsibilities. Kudumbashree’s collective farming model has emerged as a key institutional response, enabling women to pool land, labour, credit, and state support.

Drawing on feminist institutionalism and the capabilities approach, the paper situates women’s farming collectives at the intersection of climate change, migration, and rural livelihoods. It explores how collective agency and social capital enable women to navigate climate stress, resource scarcity, and institutional constraints, while also highlighting the limits of collective action under conditions of ecological uncertainty and gendered responsibilisation. The analysis further examines how Kerala’s gender budgeting framework engages with women’s collective farming, questioning whether recognition translates into empowerment in land control, income security, and decision-making.

By repositioning Kudumbashree’s collectives as sites of climate adaptation rather than solely welfare or financial inclusion mechanisms, the paper contributes to debates on climate justice, feminist political economy, and locally rooted, inclusive adaptation strategies in climate-vulnerable agrarian regions.

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Drawing on all-women FPOs in climate-stressed Kalaburagi, this study analyses how male outmigration and structural barriers reshape women’s responsibilities and adaptive capacity. The study highlights the need for sustained gender-sensitive collectivisation efforts.

Paper long abstract

The Indian government is promoting the formation of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) as vehicles for collectivising small farmers, but women’s participation remains minimal. Climate change is intensifying precarity through erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and declining agricultural productivity (Krishnan et al., 2020), contributing to high rates of male outmigration and leaving women with expanded responsibilities in farming and household management (Pattnaik et al., 2017). In such contexts, women-led FPOs hold significant potential for enhancing economic security, agency, and adaptive capacity.

This study focuses on Kalaburagi district in North Karnataka — a rain-fed, drought-prone agrarian region experiencing increasing rainfall variability. Drawing on Cleaver’s (2007) concepts of collective agency with Cinner et al.’s (2018) five dimensions of adaptive capacity, the study aims to explore how male outmigration shapes women’s agency, decision-making, and adaptive capacity in fragile rural systems. The study employs a qualitative approach using Key Informant Interviews, focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and participatory time-use exercises with members of all-women FPOs.

Preliminary conversations with practitioners and experts indicate that, despite women’s central role in agriculture, entrenched patriarchal and caste norms, limited mobility, and time poverty continue to constrain meaningful participation. Women's FPOs require long-term, gender-responsive support and collectivisation strategies that differ from the existing approaches, which are more suitable for male FPO members. The study aims to generate insights into women farmers’ lives, the factors shaping all-women FPOs, and how collective action can strengthen adaptive capacity within these cultural, political, and economic contexts.

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Peer learning and local leadership drive adaptive practices and climate resilience in banana farming under weak extension support. This study identifies enabling and constraining factors, including gender norms, and introduces narrative leadership as key for scaling Good Agricultural Practices.

Paper long abstract

Obstacles in banana cultivation including pest and disease pressures, climate change, inadequate practices, and limited extension support significantly reduce yields in smallholder systems. Peer learning and local leadership are recognised as critical for innovation adoption, yet their roles in adaptive practices remain underexplored in marginal contexts where formal extension is absent. This study examines how peer learning operates among banana farmers under weak extension conditions and (2) the enabling and constraining factors shaping these processes. A qualitative, interpretive case study was conducted using focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and field observations across farmer groups in Gunungkidul and Bantul Regencies, Indonesia. Findings reveal that peer learning extends beyond technical knowledge exchange to include relational and narrative processes that foster trust and sustain engagement. Leadership acted as a catalyst for adaptive learning, reframing priorities from harvest outcomes to maintenance practices and legitimising experimentation despite technical failures. Demonstration farms functioned as learning spaces but were constrained by resource limitations, while gender norms and digital divides restricted women’s participation in decision-making. The study contributes theoretically by introducing the concept of collective justification cycles and reframing leadership as a narrative and trust-building mechanism within peer learning systems. Practically, strengthening local leadership and participatory research mechanisms is essential for scaling inclusive Good Agricultural Practices and enhancing resilience in smallholder banana farming.

Keywords: peer learning, narrative leadership, collective justification, adaptive practice, demonstration farm