Weather Matters: alleviating the consequences of climate change for housing and mobility in the Himalayas
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Social and Political Science
Abstract
People in countries like India and Nepal across the Global South are dealing with the consequences of climate change in the shape of disasters and of gradual shifting in weather patterns over time. These changes cross-cut other changes: new roads, new building materials, labour markets, monetisation of the economy - all creating new uncertainties. How, then, to alleviate these issues? As Longhurst, Chambers and Swift (1986) argued, the problematic disconnect between development and policy thinking and what happens 'out there' on the ground is, in part, due to seasonal and weather factors. The monsoon literally obstructs movement. Seasons, particularly with climate change, do not fit the appropriate bureaucratic structures. This means weather-related issues such as unsuitable housing and rain-related landslides are at risk of being ignored. This project looks at uncomfortable and high-emission domestic cement structures alongside rain-related landslides and the effects of these on labour migration. It will make important contributions to reducing emissions from new builds in India and rethinking Himalayan work patterns in the light of monsoon landslides.
The use of cement in the built environment carries a cost of high CO2 emissions (Griffin 1987), and of discomfort in the heat and in cold temperatures, with potential health risks and added energy demands to regulate the indoor climate. At the same time the lure of 'modernity' means cement construction is widespread in South Asia (as it is globally). With this fellowship, I will work towards alleviating the negative effects of this material through working with colleagues in India to raise awareness of the unhelpful qualities of cement and promote other building materials.
Migratory patterns in the Himalayas mean that for many villages family members are elsewhere, earning wages that they feed back into the household economy. These and the goods this money buys as well as government services such as healthcare and education depend on transport into and out of the hills. Changing rainfall, in winter as well as during the monsoon, threaten these systems by causing landslides that block the road. The proposed project will build up the research community in and between India, Nepal and the UK through networking and the Weather Matters online hub. It will build networks beyond academia through linking up people working on climate-change related topics such as landslides and housing at ICIMOD, TERI, JNU and beyond.
The aim of this project is to engage constructively with policymakers on the impact of cement construction on wider welfare, quality of life and economic development in the region and ultimately to reduce the use of cement in construction in India, on the grounds of emissions and discomfort, energy costs and health risk. In addition, I plan to galvanise the conversation about patterns of employment in the Himalayas in the light of climate-change exacerbated landslides that block mountain roads. This should contribute to government policy on the infrastructures that facilitate employment and habitation
patterns.
The use of cement in the built environment carries a cost of high CO2 emissions (Griffin 1987), and of discomfort in the heat and in cold temperatures, with potential health risks and added energy demands to regulate the indoor climate. At the same time the lure of 'modernity' means cement construction is widespread in South Asia (as it is globally). With this fellowship, I will work towards alleviating the negative effects of this material through working with colleagues in India to raise awareness of the unhelpful qualities of cement and promote other building materials.
Migratory patterns in the Himalayas mean that for many villages family members are elsewhere, earning wages that they feed back into the household economy. These and the goods this money buys as well as government services such as healthcare and education depend on transport into and out of the hills. Changing rainfall, in winter as well as during the monsoon, threaten these systems by causing landslides that block the road. The proposed project will build up the research community in and between India, Nepal and the UK through networking and the Weather Matters online hub. It will build networks beyond academia through linking up people working on climate-change related topics such as landslides and housing at ICIMOD, TERI, JNU and beyond.
The aim of this project is to engage constructively with policymakers on the impact of cement construction on wider welfare, quality of life and economic development in the region and ultimately to reduce the use of cement in construction in India, on the grounds of emissions and discomfort, energy costs and health risk. In addition, I plan to galvanise the conversation about patterns of employment in the Himalayas in the light of climate-change exacerbated landslides that block mountain roads. This should contribute to government policy on the infrastructures that facilitate employment and habitation
patterns.
| Title | Life with Concrete Film |
| Description | This short film was made with the help of editor Rishabh Raghavan, with me doing the film and audio recording and planning and overseeing the editing process. It is a 20-minute film which consists of villagers from the village where I did my PhD research talking about their experiences with cement, its thermal properties, desirability or not, and how it compares with the previous building forms in timber and stone. This is framed with a ritual which inaugurates a new cement house, and the wider context of extremely high cement consumption (as well as production) in India, and the implications of cement production for global CO2 emissions. I have showed this film to a few selected audiences, but need access to editing software to finish it off - adjusting the colour of the subtitles and changing one of the pieces of text - which I will have next month when a visiting scholar in Oslo. Then this film will be sent around the network established during the workshop on low carbon construction materials in India (which is a wider group than the actual participants), and networks working on similar issues in the UK and Europe. The intended audience are people who work with other materials and maybe cement as well but who may benefit from gaining the rural Indian perspective as well as awareness of the links to carbon emissions. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | The film is not yet in circulation, but judging from the feedback so far it has potential to have quite an emotional impact (which I had not considered, but which is no bad thing, as it will increase the information retention for those who watch the film), in terms of communicating the discomfort and issues of living in these 'modern' houses - all of which is covered in my academic work, but which comes across strongly in people's own words. One construction material professional who watched the film noted in particular the usage of the phrase 'going bad' to describe the weathering and impermanence of cement housing, with cracks and other issues requiring repair and replacement, for instance. Depending on the response from professionals to the film, I may make it publicly available. |
| Description | I have built up networks and facilitated knowledge exchange around cement and low-carbon construction materials through the workshop in Delhi and through the short film on cement (see section on engagement activities and artistic products). Also, I have built up the network of scholars who work on climate change in the UK across disciplines and outside of academia through the Weather Matters Hub and through the workshop I organised in Edinburgh. I have expanded my wider networks on cement and on climate change through conferences in Brazil, Chile and the US, and built up a network of climate change scholars coming out of the latter two conferences who exchange relevant articles and some of whom will be coming together for a special issue which I am organising. The year of this grant has allowed me to develop as a scholar and to build important networks for future collaboration, funding and research, as well as to develop my next research project on resources, climate change mitigation and limestone mining, which I am currently submitting for various 2-3 year postdoctoral schemes. |
| Exploitation Route | The participants in the Edinburgh workshop were very keen to repeat the experience. The members of the cement network are active and engaging in furthering each other's research, including mine. There was a conference on cement and anthropology in Aarhus, Denmark in May of 2018, where I presented my findings. The participants of the workshop with architects and others working on low carbon construction materials in Delhi are engaging with each other and with the bottlenecks and challenges that emerged to work further on facilitating low carbon construction in India. Due to lack of funding the ongoing publication work has slowed down, but there is a Marie Curie postdoc application to build on this project further, with a focus on limestone which is being processed currently. |
| Sectors | Construction,Environment |
| URL | http://www.weathermatters.net |
| Description | My aims during this postdoc included building on my PhD research to prepare it for publication, to do impact activities including running the Weather Matters Hub, two workshops and a few short films, and to build my networks in preparation for future collaboration, grants and academic work. This meant a busy but productive year. The non/semi-academic impact activities undertaken during the period of the grant have been listed in more detail under engagement activities (workshops, the Weather Matters Hub) and creative output (the main short film). However, as this was a primarily impact-focused postdoc, it is worth bringing these together in this more narrative format. The work on low-carbon construction materials is likely to demonstrate further impact as it unfolds, so far the feedback from the Delhi workshop and the invites for further collaboration from GRIHA, the Indian environmental building standards entity and individual architects are the most specific ones. Harder to map are the films from the workshop which have been disseminated, and the short film on cement in rural north India. The collaboration with the Open University Changing Farming Lives in South India, Past and Present project in early 2018, was a positive project to work together on, but as far as I know did not receive further funding. The biggest issue with mapping impacts is that this is completely unpaid, and happening on a different continent. |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Construction |
| Description | Camel Trust Small Grant for Post-doctoral Research in Anthropology |
| Amount | £2,647 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Camel Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2018 |
| End | 08/2018 |
| Description | Changing Farming Lives in South India, Past and Present |
| Organisation | Open University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | See the link for more details on this project, which has got funding for a networking grant from AHRC under the GCRF scheme. The wider participants in the project met in Bangalore, India in February 2018 for a workshop which productively planned and expanded on connections regarding agricultural practices and biodiversity, climate change and gender in rural south India. The research will be focusing on oral histories, particularly of older women, to chart their experiences of agricultural and climatic change over time. My contribution was in relation to gender, climate change and rural India, and I look forward to continue in my association with this project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Sandip Hazareesingh (PI), Tzveti Bandakova (project coordinator) and the other members of the project are responsible for running it and carrying out the research as well as filming, which Sara Jones is responsible for. |
| Impact | The workshop in Bangalore in February 2018 included significant exchange between NGO and academic participants from Anthropology, History, Media Studies and a range of other disciplines. The NGO participants were from the Green Foundation, Catalyst and other organisations across South India, all working on agricultural topics such as organic agriculture, market supply chains, seed biodiversity and traditional knowledge. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Blog piece on my work for the University of Edinburgh sustainability blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This was a blog piece with an overview of my work with a bit of insight into my research work and presentation of the Weather Matters Hub for anyone who might be interested in engaging further. It is very hard to estimate the impact of this kind of output, but I anticipate that readership would have mostly been within the University of Edinburgh. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://sustainability.ed.ac.uk/blog/2017/weather-and-housing-research-in-the-indian-himalayas/ |
| Description | Workshop - Challenges on the Path Towards a Lower Carbon Construction Industry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a workshop that brought together architects and other practitioners working with low carbon materials as well as members of TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi, to discuss the challenges and opportunities in non-conventional building materials for a low carbon construction industry in India. The intention was to build networks, to share experience and knowledge and to focus on what the bottlenecks and issues are with low-carbon materials vs. high carbon ones such as cement and steel. Each participant presented their work briefly, many of whom were very experienced architects (including Didi Contractor, who is over 80), one participant works with bamboo supply, and one on roofing solutions to retrofit housing at low cost, one academic, one member of a building materials environmental assessment body and a range of architects working in Bengal, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pondicherry, Himachal Pradesh and the Delhi region. After each speaker there was time for questions, and the discussion was very lively. I chaired the workshop, guiding the discussion towards focusing on the challenges and benefits of the various materials - including stone, timber, earth and bamboo - which the participants had experience working with. The feedback forms demonstrated a high level of enthusiasm, with one of the participants commenting at the end of the workshop that she hadn't expected much, but that she had been positively surprised. There were several avenues of contact which opened up, for instance for a conference organised by GRIHA in December 2017, the entity regulating environmental standards for building materials, and from Didi Contractor who wanted to introduce me to a very prominent retired professor of architecture. The entire workshop was filmed, and with the agreement of the participants I circulated the footage around the group who had attended, so that they may share it with their networks. Important outcomes of the workshop included the sense of hope for the participants, many of whom do great work and who were certainly inspiring each other - there was not enough time to discuss all the technical questions that came up of how to handle this or that material, local regulation etc. etc. Specific items that came up that will be relevant for the future was that structures made of low carbon materials are already taxed at a lower rate - communicating this to house owners could be beneficial, and that banks do not provide loans for construction using these materials, which certainly hampers their use. Many of the architects work on high-status projects, and there was discussion of the over-production of architects and not enough work for them (and their lack of training in use of sustainable materials - currently this training happens as a sort of apprenticeship with more experienced architects), with some suggesting that these new architects should be sent out to work in smaller cities where there is a lack of architects and more house-based activity, where they could practice using these materials and build up their portfolio. My personal feeling was that one next step would be working to improve architecture education at university, another to work on banks and building standards to permit low-carbon materials as legitimate, another to work with engineers and others to increase visibility and legitimacy of these materials and yet another to work on the issues with cement, which go beyond carbon emissions (see the cement film under 'creative outputs'). Some of this work is, of course, being undertaken (for instance rammed earth has been accepted with a building standard in Pondicherry, which means it may eventually be scaled up to the national level), but more is certainly required. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.weathermatters.net/events/2017/6/12/challenges-on-the-path-towards-a-lower-carbon-constru... |
| Description | Workshop on climate change |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This workshop was aimed at scholars of climate change, for networking and building communication and experience-sharing across disciplinary boundaries and inside and outside of academia. Those of us who work on climate change often approach it from very different places, and so interactions in these kinds of venues (such as the 2016 RAI conference at the British Museum) are particularly valuable, and they also provide great access to whole bodies of literature from other disciplines or using other keywords which we may find useful. Attendees included people working between academia and policy, a PhD student, postdoctoral and other scholars (including one who attended via skype). For an outside view see the web link to a review of the workshop by one of the participants. The day was organised with very brief (10-minute) talks by each participant followed by time for discussion. Each participant brought very different experiences and approaches, and engaged with each other's work in very helpful ways. The feedback forms included a lot of enthusiasm for the workshop, as well as suggestions for doing this again, as it had also served an unanticipated pastoral role for a group of scholars who are otherwise rather isolated in our various institutions and settings. I had purposefully kept it national rather than international so as to avoid any flights, which I think worked well, but another time I would spend more time advertising the event, which was hard in this instance because I was in Delhi for the months preceding it, and the Global Environment and Society Academy, with whom I was supposed to be co-organising it had a changeover of staff, meaning they weren't able to be involved. At the same time, the 10 participants engaged actively with each other's work and discussed the future of work on climate change, the anticipated gaps and how we plan to work going forwards, so the workshop certainly achieved that goal. Feedback included: 'It provided an informal, insightful and relaxed space for complex discussions. There should be more of these please!''really great way of me reflecting on my area of work and why I am doing what I am doing! nice format.' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.monass.org/bringing-climate-change-home-reflections-on-a-workshop/ |
| Description | the Weather Matters Hub for climate change scholars |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This is an online hub, which was initially planned as a place for groupings of text to maintain and build the networks of climate change scholars and expose us to each others' work. It has partially fulfilled this role, but also become rather successful as a place for posting relevant job postings, calls for papers and events. The website was revamped with the help of a graphic designer in July 2017, leading to a more streamlined aesthetic and with a logo for consistency and associated twitter account. This account, and the website are also linked to a range of environmental sites, most notably the Royal Anthropological Institute's Environmental Committee Climate Change Hub, which has a remit of sharing curricula, policy-facing tips and so on, and which I have been part of shaping. Another important aspect of the Weather Matters Hub is the Web Roundups, which provide overviews of what is happening around the web, from podcasts to online conferences, from how to write about climate change to exciting new developments in the field, linking to a range of mostly non-paywalled resources and organised in a clearly readable manner (this has been noted in the informal feedback I have received on the site). I have ongoing plans with various people to publish a range of pieces on the site, including conference reviews and other material. The impacts/outcomes are hard to judge in this format, but I have had positive feedback on individual pieces there, and appreciation from those I have emailed to ask whether they'd like me to post the job they are advertising there, as well as finding others aware of pieces on there who did not know about my involvement with the site. Multiple scholars who have just started or are just starting to move into the area of climate change research have been in touch and specifically told me how useful they found the site. My future plans for the site include adjusting it to make it lighter for users who do not have access to high-speed internet (with future grant funding). The engagement with the site was mostly UK (ca. 750 unique users), followed by US (ca 400), Switzerland (300), India (250) and then other countries. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017,2018 |
| URL | http://www.weathermatters.net/ |