“We are still here” climate change, gender and immobility in highly mobile Himalayan communities

ABSTRACT

In this paper we ask: why do people in rural agrarian communities facing increasing migration pressures from changing climatic conditions, stay? We aim to understand why people stay, who stays, what are the impacts of migration on those who stay, and what are their needs for adaptation? We study a population of people who do not migrate from Himalayan communities of Uttarakhand, India, despite their livelihoods being already severely disrupted by climate change climate change and high outmigration has led to abandoned so-called ‘ghost villages’. Semi-structured interviews (n = 72) were held with affected communities, experts, and policymakers. Results show that motivations for immobility are shaped by place attachment; place-based resource advantages; social milieu; dependence on subsistence agriculture and gender roles. We find that immobility experiences are differentiated by gender, age and in situ resources. Those who stay are negatively impacted by migration via loss of labour in agriculture, changes in population size and composition, loss of community, in addition to the negative impacts of climate change. Our results are likely relevant on a global scale, to other subsistence smallholder communities who stay despite increasing climate risks. These populations will need gender-sensitive support to adapt in place.

KEYWORDS:

• Immobility
• Climate change
• migration
• gender
• subsistence agriculture
• mountain communities
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Index computed by combining the probability of occurrence of severe and moderate droughts with respective weights of 2:1 and expressed as %. Incidence of more frequent droughts implies more risk in agriculture (Page 10 of the report)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit: [Grant Number EPICC Project]; Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK): [Grant Number B-EPICC]; SUN Institute Environment & Sustainability: [Grant Number Sun Inst.]; European Union’s Horizon 2020 Union’s Horizon 2020: [Grant Number 869395].

Notes on contributors

Himani Upadhyay

Himani Upadhyay is a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and doctoral candidate at the Humboldt University Berlin. Her research interests are science-policy interphase for climate adaptation, climate change related human mobility and immobility and its implications for wellbeing and human security.

Kira Vinke

Kira Vinke is head of the Center for Climate and Foreign Policy at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and a guest scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Her research interests are in the field of climate migration and displacement as well as the implications of climate change for human security and violent conflicts.

Helga Weisz

Helga Weisz is a full professor for Industrial Ecology and Climate Change at Humboldt University Berlin and the head of the Future Lab “Social Metabolism and Impacts” at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Her research interests are historical and contemporary patterns of societal resource use and emissions, collectively denoted as social metabolism, and its's ramifications for environmental impacts and socio-economic dynamics.