Coastal mangrove forests: Micro-geopolitics of resistance and social innovation for environmental sustainability

Abstract

This chapter argues that at the heart of social innovation for environmental sustainability are the issues of space, scale, and power, which present themselves in the form of various puzzles, especially when approached in the context of climate change. Since communities are the basic building blocks of “social” they remain central to “social innovation." Taking as its key examples the Indian Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal and Zhangjiangkou Mangrove Forestry National Nature Reserve in Yunxiao county of Fujian province of China, the chapter shows how communities located on sites characterized by multiple marginalities (geographical, socioeconomic, and cultural) perceive and approach impacts of environmental unsustainability and incremental climate change in both material-physical and ideational-representational terms. Environmental sustainability, both on land and at sea, is unlikely to be realized in the absence of a pursuit of social innovation through a micro-geopolitics of resistance anchored in participatory democracy and environmental-social justice.