Stories of Climate Action: Framing and Fabricating Futures in Mumbai

CASI-Related Event

in partnership with Penn Global and the South Asia Center

Kleinman Forum
220 S. 34th Street
Fisher Fine Arts Library
4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19104

1:00-5:00pm

In this talk, we immerse ourselves in three very different estuarine wetscapes of Mumbai, India to examine how city residents, who have long been marginalized, read the city’s wet terrain, sense changing urban climates, and act amidst climactic uncertainty. By dwelling in the stories of these lesser known, wet worlds, we demonstrate how the climate crisis is already being understood and inhabited in the city. Fishers and indigenous residents sense and navigate both the crises arising from slow environmental decline that permeates the everyday, as well as those of extreme events and spectacular disasters. These modes of habitation both greatly expand and contradict the narrow ways in which the climate crisis is framed in the city’s Climate Action Plan, and demand a substantive reframing of how planners and politicians pursue climate action in the city.

Schedule:

1:00 Welcome

1:15 Remarks from Dilip Da Cunha

1:30 FRAMING URBAN CLIMATES

Nikhil Anand, Lalitha Kamath + Rohit Mujumdar

Discussant: Amita Baviskar

3:00 Break

3:30 FUTURES

Nikhil Anand, Lalitha Kamath + Rohit Mujumdar

Discussant: Keisha Khan Perry

View Event Flyer

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.