Climate Change and the Bay of Bengal Evolving Geographies of Fear and Hope

About this book

Climate Change and the Bay of Bengal argues that in the era of climate change radically different understandings of security and sovereignty are at work. It questions the geopolitics of fear and the manner in which metanarratives of climate change tend to privilege the "global" and "national" scales over other scales, especially the regional and the local. The authors argue in favour of a new imagination of the Bay of Bengal space as a semi-enclosed sea, embedded in a large marine ecosystem, under the relevant provisions of the UNCLOS that impose various obligations upon its signatories to cooperate at a regional level. Such an imagination, anchored in geographies of hope, should not remain confined to official domains and discourses but become a part of popular socio-spatial consciousness through a regional public diplomacy reaching out to the grassroots level. A Bay of Bengal regional seas programme, under the auspices of UNEP, should be conceptualized and operationalized in a manner that explicitly factors in climate change consequences into the existing understandings and approaches to environmental-human security in the region.

Contents

1. Geopolitics in the Era of Climate Change: Rethinking Sovereignty, Security and Sustainability
2. Mapping the Bay of Bengal in the Era of Climate Change     
3. Climate Change, Displacements and Imperatives of Human Security     
4. Strategic Responses to Non-traditional Security Threats: The Role of the Military     
5. Rescaling the National: Realities, Perceptions and Policies
6. Assessing Regional Responses: A Case for Reorientation     
7. Conclusion: Towards a Bay of Bengal Community     

Bibliography
Index
About the Authors

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