RS Small Grantee Update: Anvita Dulluri
Anvita Dulluri is a 2019 RS Small Grantee. She is currently a consultant under the Adaptation Division at the UNFCCC Secretariat, Bonn, supporting the proceedings of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage under the climate convention.
In the blog below she describes how she reviews and analyses the correlation between human activity and its impact on climate change through her work in the low lying coastal villages of Odisha.
The rising relevance of slow-onset processes in climate adaptation planning
New and unprecedented climate disasters unfolding around the world tell us that emergency disaster reduction responses are no longer sufficient to tackle the climate crisis. Just this year, we have seen devastating floods across western Europe, extreme heatwaves in north-west America, glacier lake outburst floods in north-west India, forest fires in Turkey, Greece, Italy and the US and famine in Madagascar. Studies are telling us that these disasters are not mere natural hazards, but symptoms of deeper changes in the planetary systems, accumulated over a period of time. My work in climate policy over the last three years has focused on the compounding nature of climate impacts and the instrumental role of anthropogenic activity in this context.
The latest report of the IPCC (AR6) has categorically depicted the correlation between human activity and compounding extreme and slow onset climate impacts. Projections in the report have shown the irreversible changes triggered by anthropogenic emissions in the ocean, ice-sheets and global sea levels. However, when it comes to adaptation, climate policies of countries continue to be driven by an asymmetry between short-term disaster risk responses and long term adaptation planning. This is because, the knowledge of extreme weather events such as floods, storm surges, droughts and hurricanes is widespread due to the tangibility of their impacts, while relatively little is known about compounding or slow onset climate processes such as sea-level rise, ocean acidification, glacier retreat, increasing temperatures, desertification, biodiversity loss and forest degradation (as identified under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)).
I explore this asymmetry in a research project on coastal adaptation measures implemented in the low-lying coastal villages of Odisha, that I undertook for my master’s dissertation as an Inlaks Ravi Sankaran Small Grants Fellow. My project presents a case study of Satabhaya, the first Indian village to be submerged due to the impacts of sea-level rise compounded by years of man-made ecological destruction to the coast.
The study uncovers the evidence of Satabhaya’s submergence in the history of systematic mangrove deforestation for port-development and shifts in sediment flows of the sea-waves, essential for beach formation, caused by the granite sea-wall installed to the south of the village. Within the backdrop of these cross-scale ecosystem dynamics that triggered the submergence of Satabhaya, the study warns against potential maladaptation impacts of the geosynthetic sea-wall implemented by the Government of Odisha under the World Bank-funded Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) project in the coastal erosion impacted villages of Pentha and Rameyapatnam.
Paradeep sea wall
Climate scientists predict that impacts of slow onset disasters such as prolonged flooding to slow moving storms, could become 14 times more common over land by the turn of the century. It is clear that reactive emergency measures are not sufficient to tackle the scale of losses arising from such events. My study seeks to point out the need for newer modes of adaptation planning that account for the cascading and hybrid nature of slow onset processes, based on a clear understanding of thresholds and tipping points of various interacting human and natural ecosystems across which such impacts span.
In the context of India, a closer attention to the impacts of slow onset events is crucial in order to balance sources of climate funding and support for short-term/ emergency disaster risk response measures on the one hand, and long-term adaptation responses on the other. In this regard, my work attempts to demonstrate the need for a review of India’s infrastructure development plans such as construction of roads, dams, coastal embankments, through the case study of Odisha’s coastal management measures under the ICZM project. It signals the need for moving away from a fragmented approach to environmental planning and conservation by recognizing vital interlinkages between natural ecologies and strengthening them- for instance, by halting deforestation and monoculture plantations in ecologically fragile landscapes, improving biodiversity, protecting natural buffer habitats such as eco-sensitive zones and prohibiting constructions for commercial/ tourism development in unique and fragile ecosystems.
At COP 26 held in Glasgow, countries on the frontlines of climate impacts such as small island nations and least developed countries underscored the importance of slow onset processes by arguing that it is not only losses arising from extreme climate disasters but also slow onset events that warrant a separate frontier of climate finance, in addition to mitigation and adaptation measures. Increasing awareness of the climate and ecological crisis marks a critical turning point for transforming environmental policies mired in a dated development paradigm, towards regenerative, equitable and inter-generational models of governance. My research locates itself within this larger endeavor of environmental humanities, by developing a rich understanding of human-non human ecologies.
Cover Image: Eroded Satabhaya beach
