TAPESTRY: Transformation as Praxis: Exploring Socially Just and Transdisciplinary Pathways to Sustainability in Marginal Environments

The objective of TAPESTRY is to examine how transformation may arise from below in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty. Climate change uncertainties, especially at the local level, constitute one of the main challenges to the sustainability of societies and ecosystems, calling for systemic transformative changes. While these uncertainties can exacerbate anxieties about the future, they can also provide an opportunity to create transformation and deep structural change. TAPESTRY focuses on three patches of transformation in India and Bangladesh – vulnerable coastal areas of Mumbai, the Sundarbans and Kutch – where hybrid alliances and innovative practices are reimagining sustainable development and inspiring societal transformation.

TAPESTRY is organised in a transnational and transdisciplinary consortium across the UK, India, Bangladesh, Norway and Japan. We aim to study transformation as praxis, by putting bottom-up change and the agency of marginalised people at the centre. We examine how sustainability transformations emerge and are co-produced amongst a wide range of actors in particular places, and the processes through which they are scaled up and out. The project’s outcomes and impact will inform processes to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of marginalised people affected by climate change related uncertainties, whilst generating evidence of how bottom-up transformation can take place in marginal environments.

Project leader: Prof. L. Mehta, Institute of Development Studies (United Kingdom)

Principal investigators: Dr. S. Movik, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway), Prof. D. Parthasarathy, Indian Institute of Technology (India), Prof. N. Ohte, Kyoto University (Japan)