Anticipating Futures: Forecasting and Climate Preparedness for Co-Located Hazards in India (ANTICIPATE)

This project examines how different actors forecast and prepare for co-located hazards under conditions of climatic uncertainty, and whether and how these practices can be integrated for building preparedness. Despite significant advances in seasonal forecasting of extreme events and efforts to improve preparedness, existing studies have demonstrated that new patterns of extreme events, such as the co-occurrence of floods and droughts – or ‘co-located hazards’ – will require significant changes in institutional processes and mindsets. ANTICIPATE seeks to investigate how diverse actors can work together to address such changing patterns of extreme climatic events in locally grounded and appropriate ways. The focus will be on the Indian state of Gujarat, where extreme variability (floods and droughts) has pushed pastoralists and dryland farmers to the limits of coping. Integrating ethnographic, participatory and creative approaches with atmospheric modelling, ANTICIPATE is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration between academics, disaster specialists and local artists across the UK and India.

Principal Investigator: Dr Shilpi Srivastava, Institute of Development Studies