A recent study dealing with the Indian Sundarbans, the cyclone capital of India, uncovers how and why advances in scientific knowledge and technological developments are failing to enhance resilience of the marginal and vulnerable populations, instead continually unmaking their lived environments.
The investigation is carried out in three steps. Examining the pre-disaster phase about whether the scientific advancements are producing knowledge that are locally actionable and contextual for the end-users comprises the first part of the study. At the second level, it examines whether the knowledge is communicated as comprehensible information that would allow timely action for different stakeholders. Finally, it examines whether the available knowledge is informing resilience governance at a systemic, socioecological level while enhancing specific capabilities of various vulnerable groups.
The main findings of this study titled ‘What is a ‘very severe cyclone’ please? Uncovering knowledge and communication gaps in climate resilience realities - lessons from Indian Sundarbans’ suggest that reducing ideas of vulnerability and resilience into ‘scalar’ parameters can achieve limited success in mitigating newer forms of risks induced by climate change. Instead, local adaptive skills, knowledge and context-based learning from micro and situated contexts can be translated into actionable components and can enable resilience and recovery through participatory approaches.
Contextual, comprehensible, networked and actionable knowledge is key to enhance resilience of communities with disproportionately high levels of vulnerability to snowballing negative impacts of climate change.
Fieldwork for this study was conducted between 2018 and 2021, with the aim of finding what kind of knowledge was required by different stakeholders and how the same could effectively inform resilience; what information was needed to make critical decisions at the household, community and systemic levels; what action different stakeholders needed to perform both in the pre and post disaster phases for stronger resilience building and what capacities were required.
The study was conducted in four sub-districts in the Indian Sundarbans – Sagar, Namkhana, Gosaba and Sandeshkhali – across 20 coastal villages with 77 local residents comprising 32 adult women and 35 adult men. Parameters were developed for the surveys along with the participants who were given a list of inductive, predefined ‘core options’, which they were allowed to modify and redefine. A total of 16 parameters were finalised with four criteria each through this process and ‘scores’ of 20, 15, 10 and 5 were assigned to each criterion where 20 indicated the worst conditions for resilience and 5 the best through a participatory process.
A comprehensive list of conditions for appraisal of resilience from the perspective of the residents was developed and not from the perspective of the researchers. The 16 parameters were grouped in two different manners. Firstly, these were grouped by their nature which yielded two categories, geophysical conditions (pragmatist) and secondly policy and governance. The second classification was based on temporality – pre-disaster, in-disaster and post-disaster.
Findings: high resilience during disasters but critically low in post-disaster period
The quantitative survey found that perceived resilience in the region was much lower than what people needed. The average level of resilience in a scale of 0 (worst resilience scenario) to 100 (best resilience scenario) was at 14.3. However, differences disaggregated across three temporal scenarios — pre-, in- and post-disaster — was quite intriguing.
Resilience was the highest during the disaster at a score of 30.22 (out of 100) and lowest in post-disaster scenarios at a score of 8.97 – both unique findings. Lowest scores were obtained in ‘politics of relief’ and ‘loss and damages’ respectively – both a feature of post disaster scenario. The exceptionally high score in in-disaster scenario could be attributed to the highest score in evacuation and support among all parameters.
This reflected the success of achieving zero casualty even during recent national disasters in the form of two very severe cyclones in 2020 and 2021 respectively. It indicates precision, timeliness and accuracy of early warnings issued by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). Locals also indicated that a significant number of disaster shelters had been constructed in the region over the past decade with global aid, federal funding, local government and NGOs.
Communication about a wide range of parameters
These particularly concerned weather and climate information – early warnings, forecasts and projections; knowledge about climate change and its possible impacts and finally how these impacts can interact with different sub-regions within the Sundarbans. These three aspects also determined the extent of loss and damages, ineffective individual and collective responses as well as poor policy and governance towards bolstering recovery and resilience.
Interviews with scientists, local managers and the respondents also indicated that the weakness emanated from unavailability of the kind of ‘knowledge’ required to inform resilience governance, address specific vulnerabilities (gender and children for example), help climate-proof development at the local and regional scales.
“We need to know possible height of the storm surges so we understand whether it will overturn the embankments and breach them. That makes a major difference in the outcome of a storm. For example, a cyclonic storm coinciding with the Perigean spring tide will have completely different outcome than one without,” said a disaster manager in Sagar, the biggest and most populous island in the Sundarbans.
Interviewed local residents also echoed an acute need of ‘useable information’. The knowledge, information and communication gaps begin with the early warning system (EWS) itself. Local managers said that the early warnings merely included information about wind speed, time and area of the landfall of the storm. However, they needed information about how the storm will affect the ocean behaviour.
Conclusion
The main findings of the study suggest that reducing ideas of vulnerability and resilience into ‘scalar’ parameters can achieve limited success in mitigating newer forms of risks induced by climate change. Instead, local adaptive skills, knowledge and context-based learning from micro and situated contexts can be translated into actionable components and can enable resilience and recovery through participatory approaches.
Contextual, comprehensible, networked and actionable knowledge is key to enhance resilience of communities with disproportionately high levels of vulnerability to snowballing negative impacts of climate change. The case of Sundarbans revealed absence of a coupled model between meteorology and oceanography (knowledge gap), customised and targeted information for various stakeholders (communication gap) and finally, how existing power structures determine access to information and knowledge.
The combination critically impairs resilience of communities, failing to provide either structural, material and livelihood securities or human development services in the form of healthcare and education. However, at the same time, we find resilience to be a discursive construct with diverse meanings and values across communities, stakeholders, actors and institutions. Integrating multiple resilience ‘realities’ during production of actionable knowledge and in its framing and communication is key to localise resilience and its constituents.
Simultaneously, translating and mediating the knowledge into clearly defined actionable information for different end-users and ensure its access in a timely manner is equally important, the study finds.
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