Climate change, relational vulnerability and human security: rethinking sustainable adaptation in agrarian environments

With reference to agrarian environments in southern India, this article argues that insights from political ecology provide an important way to move forward on debates on human security and climate change adaptation. While current human security perspectives helpfully situate the pursuit of climate change adaption within questions of social justice, they have been less forthcoming in providing suitable analytical tools to conceptualize the relationship between power, inequality and vulnerability. To address this gap, insights from political ecology are used to specify the relational dynamics of vulnerability, i.e. the ways in which marginalized peoples are adversely incorporated into political, social and economic relationships that produce their vulnerability while simultaneously creating relative security for others. This perspective is elaborated with examples from Andhra Pradesh, India, where differential control over key productive assets including land, water, labour and credit is key to the hierarchical displacement of security/insecurity across the agrarian population. By foregrounding the relational dynamics of vulnerability, this article provides analytical tools that offer a fuller account of the possibilities and limits to public policy aimed at sustainable climate change adaptation.