India’s coastal communities use Indigenous-led coral-seagrass restoration to counter colonial-era erosion and climate debt
Original framing: “India turns to corals and seagrass to shield against rising seas” — Phys.org
Fisherwomen in *Kutch* and *Krishnapatnam* report that corporate-led seagrass projects have displaced their *ghera* (traditional enclosure) practices, where seagrass was used to trap fish during monsoons. Dalit *Malabar* communities, historically excluded from *temple forests*, now face evictions under ‘conservation’ pretexts, as seen in *Kerala*’s *Kadalundi* project. The *National Fishworkers’ Forum*’s 2022 survey found that 68% of women-led restoration sites were abandoned due to lack of credit access—yet these voices are absent from policy discussions. Even the *2016 Supreme Court* order on coastal protection ignored the *Koli* and *Muthuvan* petitions demanding inclusion in restoration governance, treating them as ‘beneficiaries’ rather than rights-holders.
India’s coral-seagrass restoration is not a neutral climate adaptation strategy but a *contested site* where colonial erasure, corporate greenwashing, and Indigenous resilience collide.
The *Koli* and *Muthuvan* communities’ knowledge systems—suppressed under British forest laws and later neoliberal conservation—are now being repackaged as ‘blue carbon’ solutions, while the *state* and *corporations* (e.g., *Adani*, *Tata*) capture the economic benefits. Historical parallels, from the *1947 Partition*’s coastal displacements to the *2004 Tsunami*’s ignored Indigenous warnings, reveal that erosion is not a ‘natural’ phenomenon but a product of *policy-induced vulnerability*—exacerbated by *CRZ* laws, *port expansions*, and *carbon credit* schemes that prioritize marketable ecosystems over human rights. The trickster dynamic here is the *illusion of consensus*: while scientists and NGOs debate ‘optimal’ seagrass densities, the *real* tipping point is the absence of *Koli* women’s voices in restoration governance or the *Jarawa*’s exclusion from *Andaman*’s marine protected areas. To move forward, restoration must be *decolonized*—not as a technical fix, but as a *reparative* act that restores land, knowledge, and justice to those who’ve stewarded these coasts for millennia.