Speaker: Jenia Mukherjee, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
The Sundarbans is the largest contiguous mangroves delta in the world, spanning India and Bangladesh. The delta is a volatile island archipelago, a fluid geography, traversed by rivers, separating landmasses – it is neither land, nor water, but a liminal-dichotomous space. It has encountered series of material manipulations in the form of reclamation under aggressive colonial hydrological regimes targeting land/water binary to accomplish capitalist calculus of rule. The colonial legacy has continued in the post-independent times, manifested in ‘fortress conservation’ and embankment construction efforts with severe socio-ecological repercussions for ecosystem-dependent communities such as agriculturists, forest and inland fishers, and honey and crab collectors.
Today the delta is a climate hotspot facing sea level rise, super cyclonic storms, embankment breaching, land erosion, etc. ‘Managed’ and ‘strategic’ retreats involving systematic relocation of communities, are technocratic solutions offered by international organizations like World Worldlife Fund. In this presentation, I will critically interrogate whether these prescriptions accommodate community needs, voices, and aspirations or not, and also discuss the efficacy of a transdisciplinary action-research project ENGAGE4Sundarbans, aiming to build ‘social resilience’ in the Sundarbans. Shedding light on the various components of the project that evolved ‘at’ and ‘from’ the ground, I will finally explore ‘transformative transdisciplinarity’ as an action tool and framework in decolonizing development in the delta and beyond.
About Jenia:
Jenia is a transdisciplinary researcher investigating several large-scale global partnership projects on coastal and delta communities of South and South East, Africa, and Europe. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She is the author of Blue Infrastructures, demonstrating Kolkata’s canals and wetlands systems through the historical urban political ecology (HUPE) perspective. She received prestigious fellowships and awards such as the Carson Writing Fellowship, Australian Leadership Award Fellowship, DAAD Fellowship, Japan-India Transformative Technology Network Award, etc. for her work on urban deltas and coasts. Jenia is one of the nine Scientific Coordinators of the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS), TU-Berlin and the Indian representative at the five-member advisory board of Asian Association for Environmental History (AAEH). She has published in many journals including Environment and Planning E, Wires WATER, Environment and Urbanization, Urban Research and Practice, Marine Policy, Maritime Studies, Frontiers in Water, Hydrological Sciences Journal, etc. She is also the editor of Coastal Studies and Society (Sage).
