Editorial: The Poetics and Politics of Climate Change in Sri Lanka
Abstract
Climate change is a complex phenomenon with multiple causes and far-reaching consequences. Reflecting the interplay between nature and culture, its drivers and impacts can be observed at local, regional, and global levels. Over time, it has become a discursive reality constituted through various narratives, rituals, and sense‐making processes that infuse moral and spiritual logics into environmental phenomena (Barnes et al., 2013; Crate, 2011). Responsibility for climate change is attributed in different ways, often shaped by interactions between humans, between humans and the environment, and between humans and supernatural beings. For instance, it can be linked to supernatural test or punishment, or anthropogenic factors such as local land‐use practices, state policy failures, or distant industrial emitters, which reveals power asymmetries and environmental injustices at multiple scales. People perceive causes and consequences of climate change not only in physical terms
such as crop losses and health risks, but also as sociocultural disruptions, altered livelihoods, loss of traditional knowledge, threats to heritage sites (Crate, 2011; Pearson, Jackson, & McNamara, 2023). People's actions and reactions to climate change often depend on the explanations they receive. Focusing on threat perception, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience in Galle—a southern coastal region of Sri Lanka—van den Berg and Mallick (2024) found that perceived threats can motivate adaptive responses, thereby enhancing livelihood resilience. From this perspective, local sense-making plays a vital role in engaging with local measures of resilience. [Downloard and Continue Reading>>]
