For more information, e-mail Bruce Holsinger (bwholsinger@gmail.com)
As the impact of climate change intensifies, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Indian Ocean region, with its fast-accelerating economies, its innumerable oil and gas producers, its collapsing ecosystems, its vulnerable yet rapidly-increasing populations, and its swiftly-expanding carbon footprint, will be the theatre in which the future of the world will be decided. How will the ongoing changes affect the material and cultural lives of the region’s peoples, who are simultaneously drivers and victims of climate change? Many of the world’s major zones of conflict are already clustered around the Indian Ocean, and the region is also the theater of many accelerating arms races. How will these developments affect the global balance of power? What lessons might past climatic shifts offer for the future? These are some of the issues that will be discussed over the four two-hour sessions of this workshop.
November 20: Environmental Crisis and Security in the Indian Ocean
With guest speaker: Sunil Amrith (Harvard)
- Sunil Amrith, “When the Waters Rise,” from Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants, Harvard UP, 2013
- Sunil Amrith, excerpts from Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts and Seas Have Shaped Asia’s History, Basic Books, 2018.
- Simon Dalby, Chapter 5 & 6 from Security and Environmental Change, Polity Press 2009.
- Sanjay Chaturvedi and Timothy Doyle, “Geopolitics of Fear and the Emergence of Climate Refugees: Imaginative Geographies of Climate Change and Displacements in Bangladesh,” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 6:2, 2010, pp. 206-222
- Brahma Chellaney, “Indian Ocean Maritime Security: Energy, Environmental and Climate Challenges,” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 6:2, 2010, pp 155-168.
- Michelle Voyer et.al, “Maritime Security and the Blue Economy: Intersections and Interdependencies in the Indian Ocean,” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 14:1, 2018, pp 28-48
