Climate change adaptation and precarity across the rural–urban divide in Cambodia: Towards a ‘climate precarity’ approach

Abstract

An emerging body of work has critiqued the concept of climate adaptation, highlighting the structural constraints impeding marginalised communities across the Global South from being able to adapt. This article builds on such work through analysis of debt-bonded brick workers in Cambodia, formerly small farmers. It argues that the detrimental impacts of climate change experienced by farmers-turned-workers across the rural – urban divide is due to their precarity. In doing so, this article draws on a conceptualisation of precarity which recognises it as emerging from the specific political economy of Cambodia, and as something that is neither new, nor confined to conditions of labour alone. As such, in looking to precarity as a means of conceptualising the relations of power which shape impacts of climate change, we advance a ‘climate precarity’ lens as a means of understanding how adaptation to climate change is an issue of power, rooted in a specific geographical context, and mobile over the rural–urban divide.

Diffuse Drivers of Modern Slavery: From Microfinance to Unfree Labour in Cambodia

“…Thus, in trying to explain the rapid increase of MFIs in Cambodia, the aggressive practices of the sector, in combination with loosening restrictions on collateral, are key causes (Bylander, 2015b; Green, 2019). Furthermore, as we have noted previously (Natarajan et al., 2019), the expansion of MFIs in the study villages coincided with a wider eroding of collective support in the form of non‐waged labour between villagers and communal land access. There has also been a deepening marketization of agricultural production and a shift to neoliberalism with reduced state support.…”

“…However, rice production in general is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change given its reliance on timely watering (relying on seasonal rains) during the cultivation process (ibid.). Amongst those surveyed, 38 per cent of respondents with agricultural land indicated that it was mostly or entirely rainfed, and only 19 per cent indicated that fields were irrigated or mostly irrigated, with the result that repeated floods and droughts in the region have rendered agrarian credit an increasingly risky venture (Natarajan et al., 2019a). Despite this, our research revealed a correlation between debt taking and investments in irrigation, where indebted farmers whose land was ‘all irrigated’ held an average debt of US$ 2,329, declining steadily to those whose land was ‘all rainfed’, holding an average debt of US$ 570 (Brickell et al., 2018).…”

Constellations of weathering: following the meteorological mobilities of Bangla bricks

“…Mobile particles released by the brickfields contribute to changing weather patterns and mobilities of the human and nonhuman lives enmeshed within them. Negative feedback loops between brickmaking and climate are not just restricted to Bangladesh but are also reported in South India (Lundgren-Kownacki et al 2018) and Cambodia (Natarajan, Brickell, and Parsons 2019) where migrant brick kiln workers are bearing the brunt of climatic changes.…”

Commentary: Inequality, precarity and sustainable ecosystems as elements of urban resilience

“…Empirical work has demonstrated that while migration is seen as an adaptation response to climate shocks and environmental change processes that threaten rural livelihoods, rural-urban migrants are often confronted with alternative manifestations of precarity in their urban destinations because of structural constraints. For example, Natarajan et al (2019) demonstrate, through the experience of debt-bonded farmers-turned-kiln workers in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, that while choice and agency are inherent within the concept of adaptation, in reality these are often constrained by structural factors that reinforce rather than reduce precarity and thus hinder successful adaptation and long-term resilience.…”