Depleted by Debt: “Green” Microfinance, Over-Indebtedness, and Social Reproduction in Climate-Vulnerable Cambodia

The operations of microfinance are exalted in mainstream development thinking as a key means of supporting smallholder farmers facing growing crises of agricultural productivity in the context of daily, ongoing, and often slow-onset climate disasters. Microfinance products and services are claimed to enhance coping and adaptative capacity by facilitating both risk recovery and reduction. Challenging the status quo, this paper brings together original and mixed-method data collected between 2020 and 2022 in Cambodia to critically examine the “green finance” agenda by highlighting the ways in which microfinance contributes to reproducing and exacerbating climate precarity and harm for many. We evidence how credit-taking can lead to more dangerous and individualised efforts to cope with, and adapt to, existing conditions at home, often at the cost of emotional and bodily depletion. By doing so, we contribute to answering calls for connecting literatures and thinking on social reproduction, depletion, and climate change adaptation

Trapped in the service of debt. How the burdens of repayment are fuelling the health poverty trap in rural Cambodia

Over-indebtedness is fuelling, not alleviating, the health poverty trap in Cambodia. It is associated with increased short-term health sacrifices made to repay debt, and physical, mental, and social suffering that is endured in the longer term

Depleted by debt: ‘green’ microfinance, over-indebtedness, and social reproduction in climate-vulnerable Cambodia

The operations of microfinance are exalted in mainstream development thinking as a key means of supporting smallholder farmers facing growing crises of agricultural productivity in the context of daily, ongoing, and often slow-onset climate disasters. Enhancing coping and adaptative capacity, the provision of microfinance products and services would facilitate adaptation by facilitating both risk recovery and reduction. Bringing together original and mixed-method data collected between 2020-2022 in Cambodia, this paper critically examines this ‘green microfinance’ narrative by highlighting the ways in which microfinance contributes to reproducing and exacerbating climate precarity and harm for many. We evidence how credit-taking can lead to more dangerous and individualised efforts to cope with, and adapt to, existing conditions at home, often at the cost of emotional and bodily depletion. By doing so, we contribute to answering calls for connecting the literatures on social reproduction, depletion, and climate change adaptation

Microfinance, over-indebtedness and climate adaptation: new evidence from rural Cambodia

Microfinance loans are leading to an over-indebtedness emergency that undermines borrowers’ long-term coping and adaptive capacity in a changing climate

Globalized Climate Precarity: Environmental Degradation, Disasters, and the International Brick Trade

The final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this recordClimate-linked disasters result when natural hazards meet socioeconomic precarity. Recognizing this, scholarship in recent years has emphasized how the precarity that turns climate-linked hazards into disasters is produced within the same global political economy that enables climate change. Nevertheless, despite growing interest in the ways in which the dynamics of global economic history shapes contemporary hazard vulnerability, less attention has been directed toward the dynamism of the contemporary global economy and particularly the ways in which global material flows shape environmental risk. From this standpoint, this article argues, first, the need to account for the economic dynamics of global trade in shaping the factors that intensify disaster risk, and second, the role of multiscalar agency. Exemplifying this issue through a case study of international brick imports from South Asia to the United Kingdom, the article provides a heuristic example of how contemporary globalized flows of goods link local vulnerabilities to economic processes originating thousands of miles away. In an increasingly globalized world, it thus foregrounds a dynamic, global perspective on the genus of climate precarity.SRC-FCDO Development Frontiers Grant ProgramBritish Academ

Globalised climate precarity: Environmental degradation, disasters and the international brick trade

Climate-linked disasters result when natural hazards meet socioeconomic precarity. Recognising this, scholarship in recent years has emphasised how the precarity that turns climate-linked hazards into disasters is produced within the same global political economy that enables climate change. Nevertheless, despite growing interest in the ways in which the dynamics of global economic history shapes contemporary hazard vulnerability, less attention has been directed towards the dynamism of the contemporary global economy and in particular to the ways in which global material flows shape environmental risk. From this standpoint, this paper argues, first, the need to account for the economic dynamics of global trade in shaping the factors that intensify disaster risk, and secondly, the role of multi-scalar agency within this. Exemplifying this issue through a case study of international brick imports from South Asia to the UK, the paper provides an heuristic example of how contemporary globalised flows of goods link local vulnerabilities to economic processes originating thousands of miles away. In an increasingly globalised world, it thus foregrounds a dynamic, global perspective on the genus of climate precarity