It is statistically well-documented that access to environmental resources and impacts of the unfolding ecological crises are experienced in starkly unequal ways based on caste. The forthcoming edited volume Climate Justice in India (Cambridge University Press, 2021) provides qualitative insights into this phenomenon through policy analysis, genealogies, and ethnographic data. While caste has been often portrayed as specific to South Asia, this panel will highlight the global relevance of caste in the context of environmental justice. The presentations will summarize arguments presented in the forthcoming volume in an engaging and accessible format. The speakers will trace the historical roots of environmental injustice and connect the contemporary caste-based property regimes to the rise of empire. The presentations will cover themes such as land ownership, right to water and sanitation, and the political ecology of coal mining. The spoken-word performance will address the lived experiences of communities battling displacement caused by resource extraction.

The event will take place online.

About the speakers:

Prakash Kashwan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is the author of Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2017), is a Co-Editor of the journal Environmental Politics, and a member of the Editorial Boards of Progress in Development Studies, Earth System Governance, Sage Open, and Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.

Ashlesha Khadse is an activist linked to several food and farm alliances in India. She is associated with the Amrita Bhoomi Centre, a farmer led agroecology school in southern India affiliated to the Karnataka State Farmers Movement (KRRS for its initials in Kannada language) and La Via Campesina, the transnational movement of farmer organizations. She completed her Masters of Science in Agroecology at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in Chiapas, Mexico where she conducted research on how peasant movements scale up agroecology. She has published research papers on agroecology movements and rural women’s land rights in India.

Srilata Sircar is a Lecturer in India and Global Affairs at the King's India Institute, King's College London. She has previously held research positions at Lund University (Sweden) and University College London (UK). She currently leads a research group on Cities, Climate and Capital in the Indian Ocean World. She is the convener of the Confronting Caste series which is a set of conversations in podcast and panel formats that seeks to centre the analytic of caste in historical and contemporary contexts.

Jacinta Kerketta is a poet, writer, and freelance journalist, representing an Oraon Adivasi community of West Singhbhum district, India. She writes in Hindi. Her poems highlight the injustices committed on the Adivasi communities, along with their struggles. Jacinta is the author of two bi-lingual (Hindi and English) full-length collections of poems – Angor (Adivani, Kolkata) and Jodon Ki Jameen (Bharatiya Jnanpith, New Delhi).

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