GREEN INFORMALITIES AS SOCIALLY JUST ECOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE: Enduring with Dignity at the Edges of Resilient Development in Dhaka

Abstract

Ecological infrastructure and urban agriculture are enacting a green resurgence in cities. In the global South, however, ecological infrastructure is often premised on erasing already existing informal agricultural practices (green informalities) and leads to the displacement of marginalized urban dwellers. How, then, can ecological infrastructure be calibrated with the specific realities of the global South's green informalities? What other socially just modalities of infrastructure can be learned from the vantage point of informal settlements? Past urban scholarship has documented the crucial role of urban agriculture in addressing food insecurity and poverty in the global South, yet the symbolic, collective and political dimensions of agricultural practices are absent from these accounts. Drawing from critical urban scholarship and feminist political ecology, and based on engaged research with a collective of urban farmers facing eviction, I argue that green informalities bring together dwellers and plants in an intimate entanglement in the everyday gendered politics of endurability and collective power-building at the settlement level. The article illustrates that the informal economic and political practices that constitute these green informalities are crucial for understanding grassroots practices vis-à-vis urban environments. Recognizing the political and affective dimensions of green informalities can move urban studies and governance towards a situated appreciation of informal urban agriculture as socially just ecological infrastructure that centers justice and dweller agency.