Published Paper Details:

Climate change has emerged as one of the most pressing global challenges, reshaping ecosystems, livelihoods and patterns of human survival, particularly in vulnerable coastal regions. Literary representations of climate-affected spaces offer critical insights into how communities negotiate environmental uncertainty and adaptation. This paper examines Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide (2004) through the conceptual framework of climate change adaptation, arguing that the novel anticipates contemporary climate discourse by portraying adaptive survival strategies in a fragile, climate-sensitive ecosystem. Set in the Sundarbans, a deltaic region increasingly vulnerable to rising sea levels, cyclones and ecological instability, the novel presents adaptation not as a technological solution but as a lived, cultural and ethical practice. Drawing on ecocritical and postcolonial methodologies, this study explores how marginalized communities adapt to environmental uncertainty through indigenous knowledge, mobility and negotiated coexistence with non-human forces. The paper also critiques state-led conservation and development models that fail to account for climate vulnerability and social justice. By foregrounding human-animal conflict, displacement and ecological precarity, The Hungry Tide reveals how climate change disproportionately affects the poor while privileging institutional power. The paper argues that Ghosh's narrative reframes adaptation as an ethical process rooted in humility, resilience and interdependence rather than control. In doing so, the novel emerges as an important literary intervention that deepens our understanding of climate adaptation in postcolonial contexts, where environmental change intersects with historical marginalization and political exclusion.