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This paper examines the 2014-2015 drying of Lake Poopó, on the central Bolivian Altiplano. While numerous fishing cooperatives and indigenous campesino communities were negatively affected by the lake's drying, arguably the greatest impact was experienced by the three communities of Urus indigenous peoples, located on the lake's eastern shore. As a consequence of their historical marginalization–which began in the the pre-Hispanic era, intensified during the Colonial period, and has continued into the present–Urus have virtually no land of their own and have historically depended on fishing, hunting, and gathering in the lake and the surrounding wetlands. With the drying of the lake, Urus communities have experienced high levels of out-migration and deepening immiseration. This paper examines the causes and consequences of the lake's drying and considers the broader political and economic context of regional socio-environmental transformation. While climate change undoubtedly plays a role in the lake's drying, it has been exacerbated by large-scale water withdrawals for mining, agriculture, and urban uses. Thus, the power relations involved in contemporary patterns of resource use, in combination with regional environmental change, have combined to magnify the vulnerability of fragile ecosystems and already marginalized populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the role of sociology in climate change research and policies. Climate change can be regarded as one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. It has attracted attention from several disciplines, with the physical sciences regarded as dominating climate change research. Apparently, despite that climate change is inherently a social problem, sociologists have been slow in tackling it, at both theoretical and policy levels. Even so, available literature contains assorted and interesting sociological contributions and insights. As such, this paper posits that sociologists are interested in climate change issues, have a lot to offer and they can draw from a number of sub-fields. For instance, using sociology of sustainable consumption sociologists can tackle how societies can re-organise consumption patterns and habits, sociology of education provokes more intriguing research into the construction of climate change science, knowledge and solutions and feminist sociology can extend robust research into how the material and discursive dimensions of climate change are profoundly gendered. Importantly, critical sociology provides a repertoire of concepts and novel methods that can be deployed in climate change research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Climate change and land are linked – politically. • Climate change politics and the global land rush shape and enable one another. • Political links of climate change and land reshape axis of resource conflicts. • Agrarian climate justice is key in addressing climate change challenge. Climate change and land are linked – politically. Climate change politics intersects with the global land rush in extensive and complex ways, the impacts of which affect villagers profoundly. These interconnections occur in direct and indirect ways and are often subtle, but that does not make them less important; it only makes the challenge of governing such dynamics in the interests of marginalized working poor people even more difficult. In this paper, we focus our analysis on indirect and subtle interconnections. Examining empirical cases in Northern Shan State in Myanmar, we conclude that these interconnections occur in at least three broad ways, in which climate change politics can be: (i) a trigger for land grabbing, (ii) a legitimating process for land grabs, or (iii) a de-legitimating process for people's climate change mitigation and adaptation practices. These interconnections in turn stoke old and provoke new political axes of conflict within and between state and social forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]