ID:
S_155
How resilient should our societies be in an increasingly hazardous environment?
Lead Convener
P. Morthekai Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, 53-University Road, Lucknow, India. morthekai@gmail.com
Co Convener(s)
Karthick Balasubramanian, Biodiversity and Palaeobiology Group, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, India. karthickbala@aripune.org Shubhra Sharma, Geosciences Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, India. shubhra@prl.res.in V. Rajesh Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, India. rajeshv@iisermohali.ac.in V. Selvakumar, Department of Epigraphy and Archaeology, Tamil University, Thanjavur, India. selvakumarodi@gmail.com C. Jerome Samraj Department of Economics, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India. jeromesamraj@pondiuni.ac.in
Session Keywords
Palaeoclimate, Palaeoecology, Societal response, Climate-culture, Resilience
Commission
HABCOM
Abstract Category
Quaternary Theory
Session Description
How we respond to the changing climate as a society decides the resiliency of that society. In this reasoning, the action the ancient societies in the globe had taken can guide our future actions. For this we need a faithful high resolution reconstruction of climate and societal variables of the past. This palaeo-data, once analysed within social-ecological systems framework, show how hazardous the environment and how resilient the society were. Thus the role and extent of economy, political will, and infrastructure that were required to survive the risks in the past can be known.
In this session the following will be addressed,
What could serve as a reliable archive that recorded social-ecological variables?
How to get a faithful time-series record of bio-physical (ecological) variable?
How to get social and cultural variables as a function of time?
As a modern society, what are we to learn (and how much) from primitive ancient societies?
How much reliable the results inferred from ancient societies are?
What were the adaptive mechanisms adopted in a given context?
What are the difficulties in converting the inferred results into actionable plan?
