A typical low-lying coral atoll island in Lakshadweep, surrounded by its protective reef and lagoon, showing its vulnerability to sea level rise.
In the Anthropocene, climate change is a phenomenon that impacts us all. Changes in weather and rainfall patterns, erratic storms, weakening ocean currents, increasing heat waves and the list goes on. However, climate change is often invisibilised due to how disconnected its impacts feel from global warming itself. Often the impacts of climate change are difficult to perceive and to prove because they are the outcomes of lengthy processes and it is not easy to connect all the dots.
Yet there are some locations on the front-lines of climate change, where there are more direct links between climate change and the impacts we feel. A key example would be the Himalayan landscapes of India. The rise in temperature due to global warming is leading to receding glaciers and melting permafrost — a frozen subsurface layer of soil — which villages there see and feel the impacts of as their water sources dwindle.
Stormy weather in Lakshadweep – increasingly erratic weather patterns and rising seas pose significant risks to these low-lying islands.
Low-lying coral atolls are another such region at the forefront of climate change impacts. Coral atolls like the Lakshadweep, are living, often ring-shaped coral reefs which grow over the top of submerged volcanoes. The ring encloses a shallow lagoon and one or more small islands formed through generations of trapped sediment from the ocean. These islands are often small and extremely low-lying, making sea level rise due to climate change a significant risk for them. Residents in the Carteret islands in Papua New Guinea have begun migrating to the mainland to safeguard themselves from the rising seas.
In climate-vulnerable locations one would expect residents to be more aware of the threats they face and therefore more concerned about their future, but this may not always be the case. It is, therefore, important to understand how communities in such critical locations perceive climate change risks.
A view of Kalpeni’s coastline showing coastal protection measures. Locals often attribute environmental changes to immediate visible factors like increased development rather than global climate change.
In a paper published in Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography in 2017, Ilan Kelman and other researchers aimed to understand how communities in the central Indian Ocean atolls perceive climate change and migration. Through interviews with islanders from Kavaratti and Minicoy in Lakshadweep and Kaafu Guraidhoo and Raa Dhuvafaaru in the Maldives, the researchers found that people’s perceptions largely aligned both across their study sites and with research from across the globe in similar geographies.
Across the Maldives and Lakshadweep, people’s perceptions of climatic change and environmental variability focused more on local factors that affect them presently or in the near future. Although they did not link it to climate change specifically, they noted several environmental changes such as shifting seasons, rising seas, and increasing unpredictability of rainfall. Islanders attributed these changes to local causes – such as rising temperatures associated with increased concretization in Kavaratti. Many other changes such as increasing or erratic rainfall were attributed to divine punishment.
People did consider migration as a future possibility, but rarely from the perspective of climate change. Instead, it was mostly due to more immediate concerns and factors over which they had control, such as education or employment. It was not that they were unaware of the broader global discourse around climate change and the threats to their islands but rather that they were unable to reconcile those opinions with their lived experiences. A quote from a Kavaratti islander summarised this perfectly – ‘I have heard that Maldives will sink by so and so date but it is still there.’ To the islanders, their experiences are their reality – more so than the “alarmist” calls from scientists.
Traditional fishing boats in Lakshadweep’s lagoon. For many islanders, their daily fishing activities and experiences shape their understanding of environmental changes more than scientific predictions.
In the present study, the researchers framed their results as being rooted in two phenomena – tempophilia and topophilia. Tempophilia, they explain, is peoples focus on the present, preferring to think of the happenings of their day-to-day. Topophilia on the other hand, is people’s preference for the place that they live in. Both Lakshadweep and Maldivian islanders displayed a strong sense of connection to the place they were from, associating their identity with it. They had a strong disinclination to move from the region, and if push came to shove, they would rather move as a community than as individuals.
In addition, due to tempophilia, they viewed the world by prioritising the present. It is not that people do not care about the past or the future, but that despite taking those into account, they emphasise the importance of the present. Local and immediate concerns were therefore seen as the most urgent.
Community life in Lakshadweep – the strong sense of place (topophilia) and focus on present-day experiences (tempophilia) influence how islanders perceive environmental risks and changes.
These findings show how the perceptions of the islanders in Lakshadweep and Maldives – generally considered communities at the forefront of climate change impacts — are rooted more in their lived experiences and immediate surroundings. They focus less on global climate change narratives or information from external sources. These are important considerations to keep in mind, especially when creating policies around climate change mitigation.
The study also leaves us all with an important ethical question to ponder: Given that the scientific community sees a very credible risk to the island community while the community themselves do not, is it the duty of the scientists to convince the islanders of the severity of climate change? The authors of this study suggest that it is important not to see either perspective as right or wrong, but instead respect the islander’s viewpoints and incorporate it into a collaborative planning process for their future.