The TAPESTRY project explores how deliberate transformation may arise from 'below' in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty. TAPESTRY is short for 'Transformation as Praxis: Exploring Socially Just and Transdisciplinary Pathways to Sustainability in Marginal Environments'. TAPESTRY focuses on three 'patches of transformation' in India and Bangladesh - vulnerable coastal areas of Mumbai, the Sundarbans and Kutch which are experiencing diverse uncertainties emanating from climate change as well as anthropogenic factors including neoliberal urban development, economic growth and aggressive infrastructure development. The project focused on existing and emergent transformative alliances and asked how we can seek and support socially just and ecologically sound alternatives based on local people's plural understandings of what transformation entails. What kind of hybrid alliances are emerging to facilitate these transformative processes in these locations? And what are the possibilities for scaling up and out of the positive learnings from these patches? A key conceptual innovation across all three patches was to think of transformation as praxis, by putting bottom-up change and the agency of marginalised people at the centre highlighting the practices and pathways of emergent changes and their barriers. In doing so, we address commonalities and differences across the three patches. A fragile coastline, shrinking and increasingly exploited mangrove forests, increasing exposure to climate hazards (such as cyclones, coastal erosion, flooding, sea level rise and extreme precipitation events), and diverse threats to marginal people's livelihoods are the commonly observed factors. In terms of difference, we specifically focus on islanders in the transboundary Sundarbans forests (across the Bengal Delta in eastern India and Bangladesh), coastal fishing communities in the metropolitan region of Mumbai, and dryland pastoralists in Kutch in western India. Using a transdisciplinary approach, a central focus is on exploring pathways to transformation through a bottom-up approach using participatory methods including stakeholder roundtables, photovoice, and mixed methods. Through local and regional collaborations, we attempted to co-produce hybrid knowledge combining Indigenous understandings of ecosystem changes and climate impacts with science-based scenarios. The aim was to restore resource-based livelihoods by showcasing local community perspectives in local-level environmental governance.

Despite advancements in climate warning systems, significant “usability gaps” persist in translating scientific information into actionable insights for policymakers and local communities. These gaps arise from discrepancies between what scientists provide and what end-users find applicable for decision-making. This study aims to bridge these gaps by developing an E-newsletter, which is conceived as an educational and informational decision-support tool that links climate scientists and meteorologists (senders) with government and non-government decision-makers (primary recipients) to support the development of locally relevant adaptation and mitigation policies. A key enhancement to the framework is the explicit integration of “Access” as a core dimension alongside usability and relevance. This recognizes infrastructural, connectivity, and literacy barriers that can limit the engagement with climate information. The research proposes multi-modal dissemination strategies to overcome these limitations, enabling benefits to both primary and secondary audiences. For this, we conducted a survey of 111 officials across diverse government and non-government sectors in 17 cities and 20 states of India. The survey explored: a) their understanding of climate risks in their regions and sectors; b) the type of information needed to design effective mitigation and adaptation plans; c) their evaluation of existing communication channels (e.g., newsletters) based on content, quality, timeliness, effectiveness, and usability; and d) their preferences for the design and content of E-newsletters tailored to support risk mitigation and adaptation.Findings revealed a strong preference for E-newsletters featuring regional case studies, content in regional languages, and visual aids such as images, graphs, and figures. Based on these insights, we developed an E-newsletter template, with special emphasis on layout, design, and key features. It can enhance the usability of climate information, aiding regional and local-scale mitigation, adaptation, and risk reduction efforts.

This research examines the evolution of snow clearance infrastructure in the Kashmir Valley and its direct link to critical infrastructure-transportation. The study analyses numerous data sources such as snow removal action plans, departmental letters, notes, presentations, requisition letters, and official communications using a qualitative research approach, specifically content analysis. The research demonstrates the severe influence of snow removal on critical infrastructure by applying the theoretical framework of punctuated equilibrium theory and analysing its components, including pluralism, conflict expansion, policy image, and venue shopping. The data show a major shift from manual snow removal practices to mechanised operations between 1987 and 2022, which was driven by significant punctuations. Furthermore, the study emphasises the continual evolution of snow removal practices in Kashmir, with a focus on the incorporation of cutting-edge technologies and globally popular methodologies to ensure the resilience and functionality of critical transportation networks. The study provides important insights for policymakers and winter road maintenance managers involved in managing essential infrastructure in snowy regions.

Ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs) such as mangroves and wetlands are crucial for maintaining the biodiversity and provide many ecosystem services. However, these areas are increasingly getting susceptible to various climatic and non-climatic stressors. This study focuses on Mumbai and the coastal region of the Palghar district in Maharashtra, which is known for such ESAs and face pressures from developmental activities. The aim of the study is to analyse changes in land-use land-cover (LULC) patterns in these regions from 2010 to 2020, with a particular focus on mangroves and wetlands. To assess LULC changes in the study region, we utilised highresolution LISS-IV satellite imagery to identify the ESAs accurately. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier was employed due to its effectiveness in accurately classifying complex and overlapping land use classes. Additionally, the band rationing technique was used to highlight the desired land features. Accuracy assessment of the SVM classification yielded an overall accuracy of 85.57 % for 2010 and 92.05 % for 2020. The results revealed a 15 % decline in the mangrove cover in coastal Palghar, whereas Mumbai experienced a 16 % increase. Similarly, wetland cover in coastal Palghar showed a concerning 19 % decrease, with no notable change in Mumbai between 2010 and 2020. The results suggest that expansion of built-up areas is encroaching upon other land-use classes, highlighting urbanisation and development activities as a major contributor reducing the extent of coastal ESAs and vegetation cover. The findings of the study highlights the need for immediate measures to protect these critical areas and reduce the impacts of urbanization and unsustainable development.

Effective winter road maintenance (WRM) is essential in regions with heavy snowfall, but climate change has increased the unpredictability and severity of winter weather, complicating WRM planning and policy. This study uses the Taguchi method to optimize WRM strategies, focusing on fleet configurations and maintenance practices. By integrating advanced technologies and data-driven decision-making, the research aims to provide policymakers with evidence-based recommendations to enhance WRM robustness and efficiency. The findings offer actionable insights for improving road safety, minimizing economic disruptions, and optimizing resource allocation under climatic uncertainty, ultimately supporting more effective and sustainable WRM operations. (c) 2024 The Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Indian agriculture system is facing severe crisis due to multiple stressors, including climate change, excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides, poor socio-economic condition of farmers and water scarcity. Adoption of sustainable form of agriculture is one of the remedies to deal with these stressors. Despite this, adoption of Sustainable Agriculture Practices (SAPs) is quite limited among farmers, which necessitates understanding the factors driving farmers’ adoption of SAPs. So far, studies have majorly prioritized socio-economic and demographic variables and lack comprehensive understanding of institutional and behavioural factors towards adoption of SAPs by farming community. Current research aims to address the underlying gaps, by focusing on understanding the contribution of institutional, attitudinal and perceptual factors manifesting in attitude and perception. Thereby, to understand the factors driving adoption of SAPs, we conducted a field survey of 400 farmers across Vidarbha and Marathwada regions of Maharashtra, India. We further used structural equation modeling to model the relationship between SAPs and its driving factors i.e., intrinsic motivation and institutional factors. Findings show that perceived usefulness, easiness and compatibility are strong motivation in implementing sustainable agriculture practices by farmers. These factors need to be inculcated among farmers for improving their adoption of SAPs. The subsidy provided on seeds, fertilizers, and water leads to overutilization of these resources, which itself is an unsustainable practice. Only incentives and extension services showed a statistically significant and positive relationship with the adoption of SAPs. Findings can help policymakers in designing targeted interventions for farmers and agriculture sector in India.

The Indian west coast is under constant threat from climate change-induced hazards. Various social, economic, and infrastructural disparities along the coast cause significant variations in climate vulnerability. Current literature assesses vulnerability either over (1) a large area with poor spatial resolution or (2) a local area with better spatial resolution. The former assessments provide more comprehensive and broad insights into large spatial trends of vulnerability, while the latter provide more accurate and specific inputs needed by the local governments for effective intervention. However, there is a lack of studies that assess vulnerability simultaneously at a high-resolution and over a large geographic area, due to inadequacies in existing methodologies and difficulty in data management and analysis. This is a key gap that we address in our paper. We assess climate vulnerability of the entire Indian west coast at the village level, and propose a novel machine-learning based methodology tailored for high-resolution assessment over large geographic areas. This helped us produce the first high-resolution (i.e. village-level) climate vulnerability map of the entire Indian west coast. We found that the state of Maharashtra has the highest number of vulnerable villages and the state of Kerala has the least number of vulnerable villages. We collate and utilize a large dataset of 112 indicators describing socioeconomic characteristics, infrastructure and availability of financial services, among other aspects, to obtain a comprehensive picture of vulnerability. We analyze geospatial trends and attribute high vulnerability to specific indicators, which will help in effective decision-making at the village level.

Vulnerability to climate change is a complex, multi-dimensional construct influenced by multiple interacting factors. Several methods and approaches have been developed over the past three decades, yet there are no standard methods for assessing vulnerability (Connelly et al. in State of the art report (4) vulnerability assessment: definitions, indicators and existing assessment methods (issue 4), 2015). The vulnerability assessment studies differ in conceptualization, methodology, sectors affected, exposure to specific hazards, regional factors, and the scale of impact. Assessment of climate vulnerability and identification of indicators to measure it are significant problems. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of indicator-based vulnerability assessment studies from 1990 to 2020. We analyse 84 studies to understand various aspects of vulnerability assessment—concept and approach, dimensions and indicators, and assessment methods. Though multi-dimensional assessments represent the overall vulnerability of an area, only 29.8% of the studies assessed more than one dimension. Analysis shows that 68.8% (75 of 109) of the identified indicators belong to the socioeconomic dimension. Socioeconomic vulnerability is the most assessed, and environmental vulnerability is the least assessed dimension, possibly attributed to ease of data availability. Due to the lack of methodological differences, there has been confusion associated with index-based and indicator-based studies in the literature (Ramieri et al. in Methods for assessing coastal vulnerability to climate change. ETC CCA Tech Paper 1/2011 (issue January), 2011. 10.13140/RG.2.1.1906.9840). Therefore, we develop a taxonomy of the existing vulnerability assessment methods based on their methodological approach. To avoid ambiguity, we denote all methods that employ indicators as indicator-based vulnerability assessment methods and classify them into index-based, clustering-based, and GIS-based methods. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each vulnerability assessment method and the open challenges in this research area.

Winter road maintenance plays an important role in keeping economies running in the regions where snowfall is a regular annual feature. Having adequate infrastructure in terms of fleet strength and use of advanced technologies like road weather information system to deal with snow fall is crucial for efficient ice and snow control. This study aims to understand the economic viability of doubling the fleet size and deploying road weather information system (RWIS) for winter road maintenance. Based on the data collected from various sources with regard to costs and benefits of increased fleet size and RWIS, a cost benefit analysis framework was deployed for assessing the economic viability of augmentation and standardization for a limited stretch of road of length 77 km. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to find out the sensitivity analysis of results of the cost–benefit analysis. The findings of the study revealed that the policy makers and decision makers should consider making higher investments in WRM given the benefit-to-cost ratios varying between 21.6 and 31.6 in case of exclusion and inclusion of tourism related benefits respectively.

Chlorophyll a (Chl-a) is a pigment found in phytoplankton which is often used as a proxy for primary productivity in the ocean. Chl-a concentrations can be influenced by various factors such as sea temperature, nutrient availability, and light availability. These influences can be complex in more dynamic coastal waters. Hence, the study tried to understand the impacts and relation of different environmental variables on Chl-a production in the coastal water of Greater Mumbai and Palghar Districts of Maharashtra, India. Simple descriptive statistical analysis and a more complex Generalised Additive Model (GAM) were used to study the relative impacts of Sea Surface Temperatures (SST), Euphotic layer Depth (ED), Particulate Inorganic Carbon (IC) and Total Precipitation (TP) on Chl-a production. The post-monsoon month of August to January from 2002 to 2021 were analysed when Chl-a concentrations were the highest. The results suggested a strong negative relation of ED and IC with Chl-a. ED has the most significant (p<0.001) negative relationship with Chl-a production amongst all the variable, followed by IC (p<0.05) and TP (p>0.05). The relation between ED and Chl-a in the study area differs from the expected correlation observed. This underlines the more complex nature of Chl-a concentration during the time period. The relation of SST (p>0.5) showed least to no association with Chl-a production for the study area despite its known impacts. The R2-adj 2-adj value of 0.454 shows that the model has reasonable explanatory ability. Overall, the model explains around 52.3 % of the total deviance of Chl-a, indicating a moderate fit of the model. Such associations of controlling factors with Chl-a production locally can be essential to understand the complex dynamics of coastal ecosystems and managing the ecosystems against adverse impacts of climatic and non- climatic drivers.

Populations in many coastal urban areas are increasingly exposed to climate-related hazards. At the same time, the number of people residing in coastal cities is growing, and, especially in the Global South, these cities are characterised by rapid urbanisation and social inequality. However, the progress of adaptation is lagging, and there is a limited understanding of how future socioeconomic urban developments will affect cities' social vulnerability and challenges to adaptation. We use the case study of Mumbai to apply a participatory scenario approach, in which we downscale the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) narratives to the local level. Our results stress the relevance of addressing social inequality in urban change processes across different sectors, including labour, housing, transport, and health and streamlining urban planning across different governance scales. Our study lays the ground for integrated modelling of future vulnerability and exposure scenarios and the development of local adaptation pathways.

Disasters can inflict severe devastation on communities and territories at all levels of authority. With regard to the connection between floods and cyclones and their financial impact, this study seeks to refocus national and subnational research efforts. The consequences of floods and cyclones on India's budget and economy at the subnational government level are examined in this study. The study creates a physical disaster intensity index to evaluate the impact on fiscal sustainability after disasters, as the estimated damages statistics are unreliable. Between 1995 and 2018, the study integrated disaster intensity index and budgetary data to produce a panel dataset of 25 Indian states. Using Panel Vector Autoregression, the study discovers that a state's overall government expenditure goes up, and its budget deficit worsens when floods and cyclones strike. By further breaking up the fiscal variables, we could pinpoint specific areas where disasters have exerted their influence, especially in terms of decreased own tax revenue, increased social sector expenditure and capital outlay, increased outstanding liability, increased primary deficit, and reduced transfers from the centre over time. It observed that after disasters, states more prone to disasters have higher volatility in revenue generation and expenditure patterns, and a sharp increase in outstanding liabilities. This suggests a greater reliance on borrowing for disaster recovery. Less-prone states, however, show higher utilization rates of disaster relief funds, indicating better resource allocation for disaster response and recovery. The study highlights that state governments rely highly on ex-post Disaster Risk Financing instruments, especially debt financing, as national relief and response funds couldn't manage the increased spending and budget deficit from disasters. This study thus helps policymakers and governments look for more proactive disaster financing instruments and make changes in India's fiscal framework to integrate climate change considerations.

Climate-related hazards, urban development and changing vulnerability patterns compel cities across the world to deal with new and emerging forms of risk. Academic literature and recent international policy documents suggest potentials of conceptually and practically linking the fields of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) and emphasize the need to mitigate climate-related risks at local level. However, there is limited knowledge on how this link is established at local levels and the role of ground-level actors and practices therein. Using the case of recurrent and disastrous floods, this paper discusses the significance of linking DRR and CCA in Mumbai. It analyses policies, plans, institutions and interventions related to DRR and CCA and uses interviews and a field study to assess flood risk governance at the level of municipal wards and neighbourhoods. The findings suggest that although flood risk governance has been significantly strengthened, three gaps exist: First, a lack of a comprehensive plan for Mumbai that anticipates future risks and vulnerabilities and integrates CCA and DRR down to local level. Second, a lack of an overarching and decentralized institutional framework across sectors and scales that recognizes the multiplicity of formal and informal actors. Third, the potential of civil society and informal actors for disaster risk management and adaptation planning has not been tapped into sufficiently. The paper argues that potential exists to reconceptualize flood risk governance in Mumbai by focusing on future risks and vulnerabilities and by recognizing the work of informal actors like emergent groups at local level.

The agricultural economy of Jharkhand is primarily understood to be ‘subsistence’ agriculture. However, an ongoing agrarian change in rural Jharkhand has drawn less academic attention. This substantial change is from indigenous seeds to high-yielding varieties of paddy seeds enabling food sufficiency in the villages to a larger extent. In addition, the introduction of commercial crops like vegetables, watermelons and marigolds is another attendant change. This article is concerned with ethnographic fieldwork in two neighbouring villages of district—Khunti of Jharkhand, where farmers have been influenced by intermediaries (both old and new) restricted to State, NGOs and private companies (agricultural input suppliers). Also, the introduction of various governmental schemes, such as the ‘Bringing Green Revolution to Eastern India (BGREI)’ programme, a part of ‘National Food Security Mission’ and ‘Special-Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana’, has encouraged agrarian change in rural Jharkhand. Despite Jharkhand being a low agricultural productivity region, there is a proliferated presence of transnational connections such as agribusiness companies and research institutions linked to State institutions and NGOs to form a new set of agricultural intermediaries. These agricultural intermediaries at the regional level in the Khunti district influence the crop choice, cropping pattern and usage of inputs (seeds, fertilisers and pesticides). The study also tries to understand agrarian (labour) relations among caste–tribe communities of rural Jharkhand.

In this paper, we use a political ecology lens to look at how COVID-19 adds to a set of existing uncertainties and challenges faced by vulnerable people in the marginal environments of coastal India. Over the last few decades, local people have been systematically dispossessed from resource commons in the name of industrial, urban and infrastructure development or conservation efforts, leading to livelihood loss. We build on our current research in the TAPESTRY (https://tapestry-project.org/) project in coastal Kutch and Mumbai to demonstrate how the pandemic has laid bare structural inequalities and unequal access to public goods and natural resources. The impacts of COVID-19 have intersected with ongoing food, water and climate crises in these marginal environments, threatening already fragile livelihoods, and compounding uncertainties and vulnerabilities. Extreme weather events such as cyclones, droughts, heatwaves and floods in the last couple of decades have also compounded the problems faced in these regions, affecting seasonal migration patterns. We demonstrate how responses from “above” have been inadequate, failing to address problems, or arriving too late. Authoritarian leaders have used the pandemic to “other” and victimise certain groups and polarise society along religious lines. Lockdowns and covid restrictions have been used to surreptitiously complete environmentally destructive infrastructure projects, while avoiding resistance and opposition from affected local communities, who have also been subject to increased surveillance and restrictions on movement. While state responses have often been unpredictable and inadequate, there has been an outburst of local forms of mutual aid, solidarity, and civic action. There are also many examples of resilience at the local level, especially amongst communities that have largely relied on subsistence production. Despite the acute suffering, COVID-19 has also prompted civic groups, activists, and local communities to reflect on the possibilities for reimagining transformative pathways towards just and sustainable futures.

Inevitability of climate change and stressors such as insects, pests, scarcity of water resources, and poor socio-economic condition of farmers have led to a substantial reduction in crop yield across the Indian subcontinent. The farming community follows adaptation measures to deal with these multiple stressors. Sometimes following the adaptation measures leads to a detrimental impact on crop yield, land, and soil quality. This raises the question of the effectiveness of these adaptation measures, that is, whether these strategies have enough potential to deal with the multiple stressors (climate, insects, water scarcity) or not. It requires a closer examination of the negative consequences of these adaptation measures, which is missing in the literature. To fill this gap, the current study assesses the success or failure of an agricultural adaptation strategy followed by identification of the relative importance of each strategy from the crop-loss perspective. We used logit model to evaluate the effectiveness of adaptation measures i.e., crop diversification, sowing drought resistant, short duration crop varieties, drip irrigation, livestock rearing, crop insurance, use of groundwater for irrigation, increase in cropped area, and change in planting/harvesting dates towards crop loss of 400 farmers surveyed across Vidarbha and Marathwada regions of Maharashtra, India. Evaluation of adaptation strategies reveals that the highly practiced adaptation strategies, namely, crop diversification, sowing short duration, and drought resistant crop varieties turned out to be detrimental for crop productivity, while migration and increase in the cropped area benefit the farmers by reducing the crop loss. Findings emphasize that a thorough understanding of the repercussions of an adaptation strategy is required before implementation. Outcome of the study can facilitate the government and other decision-making agencies in prioritizing one strategy over another.

As calls for climate action gain momentum, governments and international organisations are committing to ambitious climate targets and scaling up their climate action. In this article, we argue that to address climate change, ‘just’ climate action is required which moves away from portraying local communities as ‘victims’ and/or ‘beneficiaries’ and focuses on investing in their social and material capabilities so that they determine their futures and pathways of change. Climate action will have little meaning or will produce counterproductive results unless it is mobilised to question deep-seated inequalities and unjust framings that feed into epistemic closures and foreclose possibilities of plural pathways towards radical social change. Drawing on our research with front-line communities in India, we emphasise the importance of processual aspects of addressing climate (in)justice. We underline why climate action must be steered from ‘below’ for transformative change, and why this requires attention to more ‘vernacular’ forms of action.

This chapter attempts to recast the debate on urban commons from a sociological perspective, focusing on emerging risk urbanism that threatens small and big cities, rural hinterland, and urban peripheries alike. The urban commons are created, used, and transformed by the state and capital, at different scales and regional locales, even as enclosure and expropriation of populations from a range of commons threaten lives and livelihoods, as part of a larger process of urban transformation. Deploying a social geography of law approach, this chapter frames the problem in terms of coastal urbanism and new claims and contestations over the commons, facilitated by emerging governance arrangements based on spatial zonation, and new forms of urbanism that exacerbate risks and vulnerabilities not just for entire cities but also for specific marginalized communities, groups, and urban systems.

This chapter addresses the need to bridge gaps in understandings and perceptions of climate change and uncertainty across multiple levels and reflects on the role of roundtables as supporting arenas for bridging these knowledge gaps. There is a "globalising instinct" in climate change science that tends to favour global-scale models and measurements and that often neglects the lived realities, experiences and knowledges of people living in the localities where the effects of climate change manifest themselves (see Chapter 2). National policies on adaptation are informed by such global assessments, and there is often a limited understanding – and appreciation – of local experiences and knowledges of climate change and its related uncertainties. The chapter begins by briefly tracing the ebbs and flows of knowledge-making on climate change. It shows how, from being initially quite inclusive, knowledge-making practices narrowed down to centre on expert-led knowledge before broadening up and becoming more inclusive of alternative forms of knowledge and knowledge co-production. We then go on to describe the experience of roundtables that were organised in all three research sites, involving scientists, academics, community representatives, NGOs and civil society. We conclude the chapter by reviewing and reflecting on some of the key emerging issues.

This paper provides some of the conceptual and methodological underpinnings being developed in the ongoing TAPESTRY project which is part of the Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) Programme. We debate how the notion of transformation may be conceptualized from 'below' in marginal environments that are especially marked by high levels of climate-related uncertainties. We propose the notion of transformation as praxis - where the focus is on bottom-up change, identities, wellbeing and the recovery of agency by marginalized people and explore how 'patches' and the 'marginal' offer critical conceptual templates to examine whether and how systemic transformative changes are being assembled and effected on the ground by hybrid and transformative alliances. The article concludes by discussing potential challenges of such engagements, alongside pursuing a normative and political approach to T2S.