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Paper short abstract

Across mountain and coastal contexts of South Asia, water in its different material qualities resembles both a threat to, and source of, life. What can be gleaned about the nature of environmental knowledge by thinking with the changing affective ecologies of water across these geographies?

Paper long abstract

The waters that animate South Asia are increasingly not only a source of life but a threat to life. From the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, instances of extreme flooding are becoming more common, so are experiences of drought and water scarcity. Meanwhile, melting glaciers signal a broader environmental shift affecting billions of people who depend on their downstream flows. In Kochi, a port city on the southwest coast of India, water is a way of life as people have lived intimately with the sea, the rivers, the lakes and lagoons that animate this backwater city for centuries. Yet the affective dimensions of this envelopment in wetness have shifted in recent years, as the threat of the encroaching sea continues to haunt the city, and the backwaters continue to be filled with urban and industrial wastes. In the area of Gilgit, northern Pakistan, terraced valleys carved into an arid high-desert are sustained by meltwater irrigation, a lifeline that has imbued glaciers with spiritual significance. At the same time flash floods cascading down the steep mountain slopes have always carried danger. Lately, intense rainfall events and glacier lake outburst floods have amplified calls for climate adaptation. Across these contexts, through different watery affects, relations, and materialities, our guiding questions are: What does the ambivalent nature of water across its material differences teach us about the non/scalability of environmental knowledge in the anthropocene? How are the affective ecologies produced with water changing across different scales of precarity and encounter?