Stories of Climate Action: Negotiating Planning in Mumbai’s Wetscapes

Amidst calls for urgent climate adaptation, we dwell in the everyday stories of development, infrastructure and dwelling of marginalized urban residents in Mumbai that are often drowned out by the formalized procedures of expert knowledges of climate change action. The stories we shall gather in this project will describe subordinated modalities of praxis; of how urban residents understand climate change and act amidst climate and ecological uncertainty.

We propose to put these stories in conversation with ongoing official climate planning processes underway in India and diversely situated publics through several community engagement workshops, an online multimedia exhibition, Op-Eds and a policy brief, taught course, peer-reviewed articles, conference, and book publication. Together with official, more formalized initiatives, Stories of Climate Action promises to produce new paradigms of how the most catastrophic effects of climate change might be mitigated and adapted to in Indian cities in the near future.