ABSTRACT
Climate change adaptation remains conceptually contested in academic research literature. In this context, how is adaptation being conceptualized in the climate change policy landscape of India? The chapter reviews the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and State Action Plans on Climate Change (SAPCC) to reveal the trend of tagging ongoing strategies designed to address known weather variations as adaptation policies. The chapter then unpacks one such strategy which has made this transition to argue why tagging ongoing programs as adaptation measures is not an appropriate conceptualization of adaptation. The chapter suggests that this conceptualization of adaptation is indicative of the tension which Mike Hulme identifies as the struggle to locate local weather in the global climate. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to go beyond the ‘global’ and ‘local’ binary in the existing climate change narrative and rethink adaptation to climate change as an issue of the growing knowledge divide between a locally experienced and scientifically calibrated assessment of the changing weather.
