Sm is a 60ish year-old woman, who lives in a single storey house in Nehru Nagar with her husband and son. The family irons clothes for a living, using traditional metal irons that are heated on stoves of hot coal. It is a hot day in April, and she is ironing clothes. There is a small fan in a corner, and she is asked if that fan is enough for her. 'No, I turn off the fan and work. The clothes fly if the fan is on'. How do you manage then? 'Body gets drenched in sweat, I cannot tolerate it. It is completely drenched… I cannot tolerate it. I keep sitting and ironing the clothes, I cannot tolerate it.' A little later she is asked: what do you do to keep yourself cool? 'We live like this only. If one feels hot, and there is no electricity, I sit outdoors. What else will one do.'
On a June morning, we are talking to her again and ask what it was like when she first moved to Nehru Nagar on getting married, which was 40-45 years ago. 'It was all jungle, was garden. There were trees all around here. All of it has been cut down and then these apartments were made.' At some point she talks about the material evolution of her house and also remarks that her house runs hot 'because it is a single storey, there is nothing upstairs (to insulate it)'. Later, we ask about heat and about her work, and she talks about sweating and feeling 'absolutely restless'. She says 'because of the heat, we don't light the stove (to heat coal for ironing clothes) these days. No, it is very hot. I am unable to (iron clothes) anymore now. Food also – I cook it somehow or another.'
There are several different things at play here, which interact with each other. Surely, the microclimate in the vicinity of her house has altered over the last 45 years with trees cut down to build multi-storeyed apartment buildings creating an urban heat island. An altered microclimate renders sitting outdoors less effective as a coping practice against heat. It is also clear that Sm makes trade-offs between her body, health and livelihood, and there is something of a nonchalance and resignation in it. By June the heat is bad enough for her to stop ironing clothes, with effects on livelihood and income. The heat also hinders unpaid carework needed for everyday sustenance – like cooking food. While one sees clearly that heat bothers her, its causal relation to climate change (CC) is not directly evident. What then is critical in the story we are seeing emerge? Let me explain.
Different forms of CC may be categorised into rapid-onset and slow-onset based on temporality and clarity in their beginning and end. Rapid-onset climate change events like floods, cyclones, heatwaves, landslides, etc. are compressed over a short duration – hours, days, sometimes weeks. Take note: the impact of rapid-onset events may last longer, but the event itself is condensed in this short time frame. On the other hand, slow-onset climate change processes like increasing mean temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, sea level rise, desertification, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification etc. take place over a long period of time – years, decades, even centuries. While there is no formal definition for slow-onset, nor an exhaustive list of phenomena that fall under this category, there is scholarship around the differences in these two categories, how they act differently and how slow-onset climate change receives considerably lesser attention than rapid-onset climate change in both scholarship and popular discourse (UNFCCC, 2012; Siegele, 2012; van der Geest & van den Berg, 2021; Schafer et al, 2021; Schafer et al, 2023; UNDRR, 2024).
The protracted nature of slow-onset climate change is especially noteworthy because it interacts with other dimensions, exacerbating, amplifying and driving other processes in complex ways. This means that over a long duration, slow-onset processes interact and intersect with other social, economic, political and material facets of life in the margins, leading to forms of loss and damage that may not be directly attributable to CC and aren't easily visible either. That there are gaps in measuring the impact of slow-onset events is well acknowledged (ibid) and there is a crucial need to address them to channel political and financial will into backing effective adaptation measures. Additionally, one must also note that the intersection of slow acting climate change with other non-climactic dimensions results in a disproportionate attribution of causality to CC on various aspects of life – tending to be reductionist in some domains and completely overlooked in many others (Bettini, 2017; UNDRR, 2024 and others.) There is therefore a need to reflect on how CC is studied, and how narratives and discourses are shaped around CC.
Not only are the effects of slow-onset climate change complex, but they also act over a longer duration of time, altering everyday experience. This is especially of note in contexts with existing vulnerabilities and marginalisation. Living for a long time with slow-onset processes results in ontological shifts like normalising crises, defuturing, which alter understanding of one's own capacities, self-worth and agency to navigate life in the margins (Tlostanova, 2023; Sohane, 2024). These ontological shifts in turn lead to political shifts like deepening inequalities, reduced capacity in margins to mobilise, diminished agency, and certain trade-offs in basic aspects of everyday life that no one should have to make.
To be able to study these aspects meaningfully, a framework is needed that complicates and considers the intersection of slow-onset climate change with other intersections and its result on life in margins. Four aspects are important to do so. The first is temporality: i.e. to juxtapose incrementality in southern urbanisms with the long-drawn temporality of slow-onset climate change. Second, is to study the ruptures that are caused in these spaces and understand the intersection of CC with political, social, material and financial underpinnings of life in the margins. This needs to be done across scales - of the household, the settlement and the state. Third, to underscore the myriad forms of labour that is undertaken to overcome the ruptures at these intersections, and to politicise this labour. It is this labour that has direct implications on how one understands adaptation, coping and resilience that is undertaken at the grassroots. And fourth, that living in protracted and prolonged CC results in ontological and political shifts in life in the margins which need to be unpacked and visibilised. These slow but sure shifts are definitional in shaping life, agency and resilience in the margins.
Circling back to Sm's life, one can see there is an intersection between rising mean temperatures, development at the neighbourhood scale and material trajectory of Sm's house resulting in reduced effectiveness of a previous coping measure. We also see how Sm makes difficult trade-offs between her livelihood and health, working her body even past levels of 'tolerance'. Yet, there is a nonchalance, a resignation with which Sm has spoken about what else to do except sit outdoors. Even if the direct impact of CC is not easily discernible, the more important story here is this normalisation of the toll heat takes on her body, and a resignation to do little else to cope with it.
SD is 45ish year-old woman who lives a few streets away from Sm in Nehru Nagar, and has a home-based business of sewing clothes. Where Sm is nonchalant about the question of heat, SD is amused and at times perplexed that we are asking her these questions. She flits between amusement, annoyance (at the questions), acceptance (of difficulties due to weather), and a nonchalance, a normalisation around it.
SD has similar memories as Sm: of a greener, less-built Nehru Nagar, when she came here on marriage, around 33 years ago. She remarks that it is hot outdoors, as well as indoors – that just because you are indoors, doesn't mean you will not get affected by heat. When that happens, you have many stomach ailments, she says. She remarks also that it is a big deal that the heat is preventing you from digesting food – if you don't digest food well, how will you sleep well, and if you don't sleep well, how will you be healthy? In the same breath she says, so what, this is a normal thing to happen. When asked how the heat is, she is amused. She says summers will be hot, winters will be cold, that is how seasons work. On probing further and evoking the past, she says – it was better then, earlier one found respite and sat under a tree, but now you can't because there are no trees anymore, all is built up. On probing more about seasons she concedes – yes, now summers are hotter, and winters are colder. While she is amused at the question and laughs it off, in the same breath she continues that yes, things are worse. We ask, how do you plan the future months? She says, what should I plan, what is the point of planning – if I have time after doing household chores, and the weather is good I am able to get work done, if not then no. There isn't another solution to this.
A shift of this kind where a constant and continual experience of such difficulties in the margins is not only unseen by the state, but also normalised by oneself – shapes how one views the world, one's agency in change, and one's hope for the future. The ontological impact of this gradual, repetitive process is a normalisation of crisis. This is not unique to Nehru Nagar, and speaks to similar geographies. For instance, in Karachi, people ask why are you talking about heat, heat will be there (Fatima, 2022). In Delhi, rickshaw pullers cannot sleep well due to high nighttime temperatures, yet say it doesn't matter who they vote for, it's a problem that cannot be solved (Mitra & Magramo, 2024). Shifts in how people view their lives vis-à-vis slow-onset climate change can take other forms - It could be defuturing, one's own dispensability, and reduced ability to mobilise or hold the state accountable. Deploying a Marxist, feminist lens in this reflection is critical here to underscore the deepening inequality, and an increasing dispensability of labour, by the state, but also direly by themselves.
I end this piece with three provocations. One, we need to devise methods that will capture this loss to self in life in margins, this damage to agency and ability to cope, among others. The four-fold framework offered above is a start to slow our observation to capture incrementality in southern urbanisms, development paradigms, CC and the complex intersection of other phenomena. Two, we need to unpack what else is happening to one's political agency when ontological shifts such as normalisation of crises, defuturing, etc. are shaping worldview of life in the margins: What does it mean to consider one's body so dispensable, who is forced to such dispensability, what does it mean for a fracturing labour collective, a crumbling Marxist fort to counter polycrises? And three, what can one do to repair these fractures: armed with the intricacies of these ontological shifts, how can we mould discourse and channel resources – political and financial will – into adaptation solutions that target these invisiblised forms of loss and damage in the margins?
