Geography | Dr. Aditya Ghosh Sustainability conflicts in Coastal India
Hazards, changing climate and development discourse in Indian Sundarbans
This multidisciplinary work analyses challenges to sustainable development amidst rapidly changing climate in the world’s largest delta – the Sundarbans. Empirical evidence unpacks grounded vulnerabilities and reveals their temporal socio-economic impacts. A novel concept of ‘everyday disasters’ is proposed – supported by data and photographic evidence – that contests institutional disaster definition. Then it uncovers how the geopolitics of ecological governance and its hegemonic discourse dominate local policies, which in turn fail to address local socio-ecological concerns, adaptation needs, and development aspirations. The absence of local vocabularies, cognitive values, and socio-cultural contexts along with spatially constricted, exclusionary, top-down techno-science approaches further escalate knowledge-action gaps. Deconstruction of multiscalar conflicts between the global rhetoric and transformative postcolonial geographies offers an ethical, Southern perspective of sustainability.
Funding: Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD)
Duration: 2012-2016
Selected Publications
Ghosh A & Boyd E (2019): Unlocking knowledge-policy action gaps in disaster-recovery-risk governance cycle: A governmentality approach”. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101236
Ghosh A (2018): Sustainability conflicts in Coastal India: Hazards, changing climate and development discourse in Indian Sundarbans. Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-63892-8
Ghosh A & Boykoff M (2018): Framing sustainability and climate change: Interrogating discourses in vernacular and English-language media in Sundarbans, India. Geoforum https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.11.014
Ghosh P & Ghosh A (2018): Is ecotourism a panacea? Political ecology perspectives from the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, India. GeoJournal, 1-22
Ghosh A, Schmidt S, Fickert T & Nüsser M (2015): The Indian Sundarban Mangrove Forests: History, Utilization, Conservation Strategies and Local Perception. Diversity, 7(2), 149-169.