Vij’s research will focus on the governance of adaptation. The impetus will be on understanding how adaptation is conceptualised as a political process. His research will explore the influence of power on approaches to policymaking for adaptation at the national and district levels in three South Asian countries—India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Further, it will identify the different approaches and the underlying administrative traditions that have shaped the governance of adaptation in each region or country. The research will then move on to identifying the positive (productive force) and negative applications of power, such as ‘power in action’. This should help with the understanding of the political processes involved in framing adaptation policies and strategies, thus directly contributing to the project.

It will also generate knowledge on how a given actor/agency/structure uses ‘power over’ to overpower decisions and also to limit the boundaries of a given decision.

Vij holds double Master’s degrees: one in Sustainable Development Practices from TERI University and another in Development Management from Tata-Dhan Academy. Before starting his PhD, he worked with SaciWATERs on projects focused on peri-urban water governance and climate change in south Asia. He has worked as a consultant on the Living with Climate Change project (SSHRC) with partners in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Canada. He gained experience in project design and coordination while working on the ‘National Dairy Plan’ at the National Dairy Development Board, Ministry of Agriculture, India.