Speakers
If you can predict it, you can name it.
Across India, hundreds of words in local dialects capture the specific rhythms of regional climate: a short drizzle versus a multi-day downpour, particular cloud formations, the first signs of a temperature spike. This talk looks at what it means when those words start to disappear, and what that loss says about our relationship to the natural world.
India’s climate discourse is largely conducted in English, top-down, and removed from the lived reality of those most affected by the crisis. As weather patterns grow more erratic, the environmental phenomena they once reliably described are disappearing too, and with them, the language and knowledge. A pilot study across twenty-two languages and fifteen states found that farmers, fisherfolk, and forest-dependent communities report over a hundred vernacular terms fading from use, taking entire systems of ecological literacy with them. Language, this project argues, is infrastructure essential to grassroots resilience and locally grounded climate solutions.
Speakers
Marisha Karwa
Marisha Karwa is a storyteller at heart with nearly two decades of experience in journalism across publications including the Hindustan Times, Daily News & Analysis (DNA), IndiaSpend, and the Beijing-based China Daily. She led the messaging and storytelling portfolio at the Rainmatter Foundation, the country’s leading climate philanthropy, and now freelances as an independent climate communicator and researcher. She has volunteered at the Archives at NCBS.
Harini Nagendra
Harini Nagendra is Director, School of Climate Change and Sustainability, at Azim Premji University. Her work focuses on forest conservation by communities, urban commons, and climate change amongst other themes. She is a well-known public speaker and writer. Her books include Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future; Cities and Canopies: Trees of Indian Cities; So Many Leaves, and Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities. She also writes the acclaimed Bangalore Detectives Club series, a set of historical mysteries set in 1920s Bangalore.
Samira Agnihotri
Samira is an ecologist and transdisciplinary researcher whose work spans ecology, acoustics, anthropology, and linguistics. She completed her MSc in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences and her PhD at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, and is currently Associate Professor at the University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology. Her work is grounded in “listening ecology,” an approach foregrounding attentiveness to diverse voices, human and more-than-human. Since 2004, her research has been rooted in the Biligiri Rangan Hills, collaborating with the Solega community, and she leads the Coexistence Fellowship Programme at TDU.
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