Climate Change an Emerging Threat to Peace and Security in Assam (North-East India): A Political Ecology Approach

This dissertation addresses two broad questions using the Political Ecology (PE) approach: first, the impact of climate change on peace and security in North-East India especially the state of Assam. To answer the question, I broke the research into two separate parts, the first examines the linkage between climate change and security, and the second examines how climate change affects the existing conflicts in Assam, North-East India. The second question, what are the overall political views and developments on the intersection of climate change and security in the region to answer this question, I broke the research further into two separate parts. The first examines how the sub-national and ruling government policy approaches, understand and seeks to address the discourses of climate security. The second examines the recently introduced citizenship bills in the region especially Assam as a case study, which will help to understand the realities and opportunities in addressing climate conflict from a development perspective in the region. The central contribution of this dissertation is to elucidate the challenges facing institutions that have the mandate of addressing climate conflict and wider climate-security connections. While the lessons of this research have academic implications, the evident challenges facing practitioners in conceptualizing and addressing the link between climate change and conflict should serve as an argument for the policy and implementation community to critically examine how their efforts are affected by the discourses and scales of climate-conflict and climate-security.
A wide range of research is available on environmental issues including climate change and its implications for various sectors. Also, being a subject of exceptional importance to the entire global community much printed and electronic data is being produced and shared. However, the impact of climate change on existing conflicts and how it become a significant source of violent conflicts and emerged as a regional security challenge in North India (Assam) using the Political Ecology lens was studied relatively less.
The literature informed by political ecology—generally explores the relationship between climate change and conflict through case studies, employing a wide range of methods that enable understandings not accessible through exclusively large quantitative studies I will be considering climate change an intermediate variable, which indirectly affects conflict by influencing external factors while being mediated by the present socioeconomic, geographic, and political conditions of the case.