Sustainable socio-ecological transformations in agriculture: cases from South Asia

ABSTRACT

Climate change is becoming a defining factor for communities in South Asia. Forming one-fifth of the world population, the region increasingly faces climate-induced disasters such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, cyclones etc. This region also has one of the world’s poorest people who struggle to cope with the rapidly changing climatic conditions. Agriculture still employs many people in the region, one of the worst-hit sectors. Agriculture will become untenable in some parts of the region due to climate change. Monsoon patterns have changed, and agriculture does not guarantee sustainable income for the vast majority. Many climate change adaptations have been initiated in the region in response to the threat of climate change. Scholars and practitioners feel that these adaptations must be transformative to be effective. In this paper, we examine eight such adaptations from three South Asian Countries – Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, from the lens of transformative adaptation. We found that no single adaptation initiative meets all the criteria for sustainable socio-ecological transformations. However, there is a significant overlap between different typologies of transformation as envisaged in the paper and literature. We conclude that the concept of socio-ecological transformation is new for South Asia, so integrating it into the programmes and policies is the need of the hour.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformation
• adaptation
• South Asia
• communities
• climate change

Acknowledgments

Pranav Prakhyat Garimella has changed affiliation to World Resources Institute India where he currently works as a Program Manager. The author is grateful to the organisation for the time and resources provided to complete the review process and publish the article.

The authors thank the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business for providing support in terms of time and resources to undertake research and write the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.