Climate Change, Displacement, and Environmental Citizenship: A Political Ecology of the Assam Flood Crisis
Abstract
Recurrent floods in Assam are typically framed as a natural disaster, but exposure, loss, mobility, and relief and recovery are socially and politically manufactured. The paper analyses the Assam flood situation of 2025 using a combined model of political ecology, climate displacement governance, environmental sociology and environmental citizenship, in comparison to the one in 2024. Qualitative content analysis of government memoranda, disaster management plans, policy instruments, national and international organization’s scholarly research and publications are used. In 2025, 28 districts, 3,255 villages and 1,119,031 people were affected by the floods. 78,813 persons were hosted in relief camps, and 36 people died due to floods, urban flooding and landslides. Such figures should be taken with a pinch of grain: the concept of affected population is distinct from that of evacuation; the stay in the camp is separate from the concept of migration and long-term displacement. It is claimed that the disaster is the result of the interaction of extreme monsoon conditions and a dynamic river system with historically built-up vulnerabilities such as river bank erosion, insecure tenure, fragile embankments, settlement in chars and low lying areas, livelihood dependence on land and inequitable access to public resources. While the state has enhanced its ability to save lives through relief and early warning, a response-centred approach is not sufficient to tackle landlessness, documentary precocity, cultural dislocation and long-term rehabilitation due to erosion. Flood displacement also remakes citizenship by creating a new emphasis on proof of residence, land and identity for claims for compensation, welfare and political membership. Environmental citizenship is thus envisioned as a rights-based, participatory relationship that sees vulnerable citizens not only as individuals who are responsible for their own environmental footprint, but also as a claimant for climate justice and a producer of knowledge about risk. The paper suggests a displacement-sensitive flood policy, portable entitlements, rights-based relocation, community participation, disaggregated data and long-term basin governance.