Sea nomads in Southeast Asia. Photo: Diana Suhardiman
Diana about receiving the ERC Advanced Grant:
“Local communities in Southeast Asia have been forced to adapt, drawing on their tacit knowledge, cultural values, and the ability to continuously evolve. And yet, their knowledge systems are almost absent in global discussions on climate adaptation. The ERC Advanced Grant, will enable us to create grassroots inter-scalar climate adaptation assemblies and networks towards more inclusive and just adaptation”.
17-06-2025
Diana Suhardiman, KITLV director and special professor of Natural Resource Governance, Climate and Equity at Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Leiden University, received an ERC Advanced Grant of € 2.5 million.
Suhardiman will use the grant to do research on better understanding grassroots adaptation forces and practices towards more inclusive and just climate governance.
Climate change is affecting each and every one of us, though some more severely than others. It is unfolding with levels of extremity like never before. Widespread forest fires due to severe droughts as well as massive floods (and landslides) caused by torrential rains and extreme storms time and again force tens of thousands of people to evacuate, causing catastrophic socio-economic loss, and wreaking havoc to already fragmented ecosystems around the world. Along with it, climate governance is at an impasse. Scholars, policy makers, civil society organizations, and international organizations worldwide understand the urgency to act but remain in disarray and are unable to come up with inclusive, nested, and just inter-scalar adaptive strategies.
Tracing evolutionary pathways
To tackle this ongoing crisis, the world can’t rely on scientific knowledge alone. The project, entitled ‘Tracing evolutionary pathways in grassroots climate governance: Connecting past, present, and future inter-scalar adaptation strategies in Southeast Asia - TRACE’ poses two questions to break the current deadlock in global climate governance. Which grassroots knowledge systems are key for our global adaptation? How can we mobilize them to enhance our understanding of adaptation?
This deadlock is rooted in the way adaptation is framed: as something that only occurs in the present and is geared towards the future. The project traces climate adaptation practices of the past, linking them with present and future strategies. At the heart is the underexplored potential of grassroots strategies, such as water management and the use of firebreaks, which have proven their resilience over centuries.
Plural knowledge systems
The project focuses on Southeast Asia as a key site to adaptation strategies. Four socio-ecological systems have been selected as pockets of resistance where grassroots knowledge systems persist: 1) upland cultivation in Laos; 2) irrigated agriculture in Indonesia; 3) forest conservation in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands; and 4) fishing practices of sea nomads in the Philippines.
Grassroots approaches
TRACE will bring together these four case studies as embryo to set up a platform to better understand grassroots adaptation practices and connect them with national and global climate discussions. Conceptually, this platform will advance our understanding of adaptation through the lenses of knowledge, culture, and agency. For example, farmers in Indonesia continuously adapt their crop planting season while using at least nine different calendar systems at the same time. Similarly, fishermen have continuously (re)arranged their seafaring routes in response to climate and agrarian change, conflict, and globalization.
To conclude, by tracing communities’ adaptation practices from the past and at present, the project will reveal how grassroots approaches could inform and enhance global adaptation.
About the ERC Advanced Grant
This competitive five-year grant is awarded by the European Commission to established, leading researchers with ground-breaking, ambitious projects. Read more.