Indus River Delta: Contested Narratives in the Climate of Change

Abstract

The Indus River delta is characterised by extreme issues: loss of 0.5 million hectares of fertile land and local livelihoods, environmental degradation including salinity and waterlogging, and significant reduction of freshwater flows into the delta where climatic changes further exacerbate existing complexities. These concerns and local people's marginality are typically conceptualised through different but singular lens of either biodiversity conservation, techno-managerial water management solutions, or lately climate change by different actors. Conversely, fishing communities advance a highly political discourse about the delta and situate their marginality in the historical socio-political processes and large-scale projects for taming the Indus River waters for agriculture development by the Pakistani state that reorganised their social space. This paper aims to understand how knowledge(s) about the Indus Delta are produced, legitimized, mobilized, and deployed to “solve” the “problems,” whereas other discourses such as those of the indigenous fishing communities remain marginal. It explores the consequences of this for people living in the delta.