Staying Afloat: Climate Change Decision-making in Miami and Mumbai

• In Event: 3540 - Development and Global Environmental Change: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

In the following decades, climate change will irrevocably alter coastal cities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai and Miami, two of the cities most vulnerable to flooding, this paper studies climate change decision-making. Through research in Kalina, Mumbai and Shorecrest, Miami, two neighborhoods that flood frequently, it asks: How do residents of flood-prone neighborhoods respond to the growing threat of flooding, given varying access to resources, risk perception, and ties to place? It uses environmental inequality both within and between cities to examine decisions to stay, adapt, and move. Further, it examines the role of institutions (like the state) in mediating decisions and lessening the costs of inaction. Paradoxically, for residents in Mumbai (many who live in informal settlements), who are unaware of climate change and have few safety nets, there is increased urgency to act soon. However, in Miami, despite high climate awareness and state support, there is inertia to act. This paper finds, in the absence of safety nets such as flood insurance or disaster relief, residents in Mumbai take matters into their hands or rely on private developers for adaptation.

Climate change is a process that is global, transgresses national boundaries, and variously impacts different locations, compounding existing inequalities between and within cities. Further, while sociologists have extensively studied the existence of environmental inequality in diverse settings, with respect to climate change, little is known about the contours it takes or the implications of this on residents’ ability to cope and their decisions to adapt in place, move, or make other choices. Through an ethnographic account of decision-making, this study provides micro-level data about the changing contours of flood-prone neighborhoods in coastal cities by capturing residential decisions.

Author

• Kalyani Monteiro Jayasankar, Princeton University