"As the world debates what climate change has in store for its low-lying coasts, the people of India's Sundarbans, located at the southwestern edge of the Ganges delta, have weathered shrinking and sinking lands for decades. Arne Harms follows islanders as they navigate and look back on the experience of collapsing embankments, recurrent floods, and, ultimately, the disappearance of land and homesteads. Challenging the all-too-convenient notion of "climate refugees," Harms contends that islanders are not the obstinate victims of a rising sea or that the submerging of islands can be blamed on climate change alone. Situating sea-level rise amidst environmental transformation and state relations, Enduring Erosions looks to past and present experiences in the Sundarbans as a window into what the future has in store for people on many of Asia's low-lying, crowded shores"--

Arne Harms is senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale.