Decolonizing Climate Knowledge: An Ethnographic Study of Travel and Mobility in Indian Himalayas in an Era of Climate Change
About the Project
In glaciated mountain areas, life is strongly impacted by climate-related changes and its implications for the cryosphere (water in its solid form). The research on the human dimensions of climate change among mountain populations is scarce and largely focused on the implications for water supply, with limited attention to other uses of ice, for instance, mobility provided through ice paths. Moreover, current states of knowledge about the Himalayan cryosphere remain limited due to a lack of meteorological data, technological limitations, and the challenging topography of the region. This lack of knowledge is particularly critical in the Indian Himalayas.
This study addresses this knowledge gap by considering the voice of the local population of the Indian Himalayas, a group that remains largely absent from scientific studies, but which has substantive knowledge about climate and the mountain cryosphere. It does so by looking at the implications of climate change on mobility in the mountains and asks: How has climate change reshaped and how is it reshaping mobility in the Indian Himalayas? What insights about climate change, its human dimensions, and how it affects bodies of ice can emerge from an analysis of mobility on foot over time in the Indian Himalayas? These questions will be answered through a qualitative study of mobility on foot over time in six traditional routes/axes in the regions of Ladakh and Zanskar, which all entail walking on ice in its various forms: crossing glaciers, frozen lakes and rivers and walking on frozen land surfaces.
This project is important because it will contribute to climate knowledge and to the local indicators of climate change by providing alternate epistemologies and narratives. Despite the call to decolonize knowledge, when indigenous communities are invited to participate in climate change research, their participation is often more a token representation than contributory. Also, while the production of knowledge about the mountains of the Himalayas has historically been achieved in collaboration with local populations, indigenous voices are largely erased from accounts about ice. The epistemology of science in climate research confines knowledge about the mountain cryosphere to its specific technologies. Ice in the Himalayas is generally studied from a distance, through remote sensing, and with limited interaction at the ground level. Yet, for the populations of the Indian Himalayas, knowledge about ice develops through a physical engagement with the environment. It is based on a lifetime of living in the mountains and of observing the bodies of ice that impact people's lives. It often develops through walking, a mode of transport which is a defining feature of life in the region due to the limited development of the road network. The observations of indigenous populations of the Himalayas that emerge from their engagement with the mountains can be brought into conversation with climate science.
To accomplish this study, the PI will undertake research in the Indian Himalayas along with MA students, local RAs, and local participants. Data will be collected through qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, focus groups/memory workshops, and photo elicitation. The theoretical and methodological contributions of this study will be relevant for anthropologists, geographers, climate scientists, and for development studies, environmental studies, and mountain research. The knowledge mobilization plan is conceived in such a way that the study's findings will also reach policy-makers, practitioners, and the general public.