Everyday adaptations to climatic and agrarian change in rural South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

“Transformational adaptation” is increasingly upheld as a necessary response to the climate crisis. Yet, in many smallholder agriculture contexts, where rural change emerges through multiple interacting processes, there is limited consenus around what transformation means, and whose definition counts. This article describes the everyday adaptations of fisher people, rice and aquaculture farmers in South Sulawesi, Indonesia as they negotiate entangled processes of climate change and agrarian dynamics. We show how everyday adaptations respond to compounding climatic and agrarian pressures, including declining productivity, land scarcity, flooding, and rising salinity levels in aquaculture ponds. Farmers adapt by seasonally modifying commodity production practices (most notably through introducing seaweed, garcilaria verrucosa, into aquaculture ponds), and by participating in periods of out-migration and off-farm work. These class– and gender-differentiated adaptations help to sustain rural life and livelihoods amidst conditions of rural vulnerability and uncertainty, yet they also increase exposure to commodity price volatilites and precarious labour arrangements. Our findings suggest that adaptation practice and scholarship could be more cognisant of rural aspirations, changing agrarian relations, and local definitions of adaptive futures. While everyday adaptations are vital to sustaining rural livelihoods, more radical and transformative responses to the climate crisis will also require reworking existing agrarian inequalities, and recognising smallholder aspirations for rural futures.

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