Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change and People-Centered Development

Climate change is fundamentally an ethical problem that has moral connotations. In this context, adaptation strategies need to be people-centeredPeople-centred, where the ensuing processes and outcomes are capable of ensuring equality and justiceJustice, care and empowermentEmpowerment for those who are disadvantagedDisadvantaged and vulnerable in society. Such an approach therefore involves not only strengthening the adaptive capacities of vulnerable groups, but also deconstructing certain dominant narrativesNarratives surrounding climate change and climate change adaptationAdaptation. Prevalent metanarrativesMetanarratives on climate changeClimate change do not emphasize adequately on the everyday life struggles and knowledge systems of poor and marginalized actors. Moreover, present day planned adaptation strategies tend to ignore the cultural, social, economic and political contexts shaping people’s marginalization and vulnerability. They tend to discount the underlying social inequalities and inequities that shape these diversities. Instead they have the potential to reinforce existing vulnerabilities and livelihoodLivelihoods insecurities. There is a need for knowledge, actions and movements situated from the standpoints of the marginalized actors. We need to rely on the strengths of people, their cultural narrativesNarratives, local knowledge systemsKnowledge systems and wider social networks. For many poor and marginalized communities, the only power they have is their local knowledge and their solidarity networksSolidarity networks. Nevertheless, local knowledge systems are both situated and dynamic. The historicityHistoricities of marginalization and resource inequities among those vulnerable to climate changeClimate change can never be ignored. Further, we have to give attention to the politics of difference in the production of knowledge, where social interactions are usually routinized across intersectional dimensions of class, gender, race, caste, ethnicity, region, religion, language or occupation and their natural environment. The arguments presented here would be substantiated through the life stories of small-scaleSmall-scale fishing communities in India.