Law, Colonial-Capitalist Floods, and the Production of Injustices in Eastern India: Insights for Climate Adaptation

IF 2.6 1区 社会学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Birsha Ohdedar
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Abstract

Floods are not merely ‘natural’ disasters; rather, they emerge as socio-natural phenomena shaped by political, social, and economic processes. Law plays a pivotal role in producing and sustaining these processes and contributes to the creation of unjust environments. Drawing on political ecology and environmental history, this article analyzes the role of law and its interactions with colonialism and capitalism in the Damodar river valley in Eastern India. The Damodar river valley is an intensely engineered and hazardous region, a site of multiple interventions and developmental and ecological experiments for over a century. Colonial and post-colonial legacies have left a lasting imprint on legal, policy, and institutional frameworks, establishing a path-dependent trajectory for addressing future climate change adaptation challenges. While focusing on a specific case study, the article's approach and findings have broader significance, especially in the context of climate adaptation. The central argument underscores the need to understand the political and legal dimensions of flooding, and reinforces the need for a shift beyond incremental adjustments that do not tackle the underlying structures that produce the injustices associated with floods. It highlights the importance of ‘transformative adaptation’ approaches that address the root causes of climate-related disasters, such as restructuring power relations between actors, reconfiguring governance structures, and scrutinizing ideologies that mediate how water is used and distributed.

印度东部的法律、殖民资本主义洪水和不公正的产生:对气候适应的启示
洪水不仅仅是 "自然 "灾害,而是由政治、社会和经济过程所形成的社会自然现象。法律在产生和维持这些过程中发挥着关键作用,并助长了不公正环境的形成。本文以政治生态学和环境史为基础,分析了法律的作用及其与印度东部达莫达河谷的殖民主义和资本主义之间的相互作用。达莫达河谷是一个工程密集、危险重重的地区,一个多世纪以来一直是多种干预、发展和生态实验的场所。殖民时期和后殖民时期的遗产在法律、政策和制度框架上留下了持久的烙印,为应对未来的气候变化适应挑战建立了一条路径依赖轨迹。虽然文章侧重于一个具体的案例研究,但其方法和结论具有更广泛的意义,尤其是在气候适应方面。文章的中心论点强调了理解洪灾的政治和法律层面的必要性,并强调了超越渐进式调整的必要性,因为渐进式调整并不能解决造成与洪灾相关的不公正现象的根本结构。它强调了 "变革性适应 "方法的重要性,这种方法可以从根本上解决与气候有关的灾害,如调整行为者之间的权力关系、重新配置治理结构,以及仔细审查影响水的使用和分配的意识形态。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
6.10
自引率
16.30%
发文量
29
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