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Paper short abstract

Dominant climate governance frames change as a technical problem. Ethnography among Adivasi communities in Jharkhand highlights women-led relational climate imaginaries rooted in care, reciprocity and responsibility, offering alternative epistemic and political insights for global climate governance

Paper long abstract

Contemporary climate governance frames climate change as a technical, biophysical problem, privileging carbon metrics, managerial solutions and market-based mechanisms. Anthropological research in Indigenous contexts, however, reveals alternative understandings of climate causality. Ethnographic evidence from the adivasi mobilizations over jal, jangal, jamin in Jharkhand presents Indigenous climate imaginaries as grounded in an ethic of care, emphasizing reciprocity, responsibility and relational accountability among humans, non-humans, ancestors and territory. The processes of environmental degradation and climatic instability are explained as a consequence of broken relationships rather than an abstract systemic failure, thereby reflecting the long-term effects of colonial and capitalistic transformations that signal the importance of relational dwelling, pluriversal ecological politics and Indigenous approaches of climate responsibility. Many Indigenous practices - shifting cultivation (jhum), communal forest management and ritual engagements with land and water - have been subject to increasing regulation under contemporary environmental governance frameworks. These relational ethics are often sustained through the practices of Adivasi women, who have long been at the forefront of environmental protection. One example is Jamuna Tudu, a Santhal leader who mobilized local communities to protect forests from illegal logging in the Kolhan division of Jharkhand, through the foundation of the Van Suraksha Samiti in 1998. Her movement shows the cultural and spiritual significance of sal trees within Adivasi relational worldviews and confronts unsustainable deforestation. In our work, we try to highlight how these ethics of care and the Indigenous practices have come to form both an epistemic and a political input to global climate governance grounds.