DR. TMA PAI ENDOWMENT CHAIR
in
Adaptive Ecologies & Climate Extremes - Decolonising the Anthropocene
The development trajectories of the Panchagangavali riverine region is a narrative of colonial and post-independence thought and action. In recent years, the rich wet region of Panchagangavali (‘confluence of five rivers’) has been facing dramatic transitions – climate change-related events, intense infrastructural development and conflicts over land and resources, while local craft and livelihood practices that respect nature-culture relations are being erased. The Kundapura Estuary (Udupi, Karnataka) is a threshold, a confluence of multiple ecotones, continually shifting and shaping the environment. These ecotones are, and lie, in between the diverse mangroves, barrier islands and sand bars (bengre), river islands (kudru), multitude waterways that are home to amphibious creatures and their breeding and nesting grounds, human settlements, ancient cultivation practices, and material movements.
Particularly in the past five years, the unprecedented changes in the landscape during the monsoon season have demonstrated a lack of understanding of how to work with unpredictable weather patterns, resulting in water scarcity, floods and landslides between the Western Ghats mountains and the Arabian Sea. Besides climate change, I believe that there is a gap in the way development and infrastructures are conceptualized, designed and built. These gaps (in understanding weather and excluding it) emerge from reductive methods of recording data that does not include the complexities on the ground, paying no attention to change.​ This work is oriented to record new narratives of a complex watery terrain, in order to influence environment and development initiatives with greater sensitivity to the ecologies that support life.