Eroding Shorelines, Eroding Trust: Analysing the Interplay between State Policy, Climate Change and Social Exclusion on the Kerala Coast

Abstract Home to over 800,000 traditional fishing households, Kerala has a thriving fisheries sector. The seafolk live across the state’s 593-km long coastline and have been one of the most socially and economically marginalized communities in Kerala. Of late, the lives and livelihoods of the communities has been severely disrupted by the increasing incidence of extreme weather events like tropical cyclones and tidal floods on the Kerala coast. The paper examines the status of existing coastal protection measures in Kerala, the impact of extreme weather events on the asset loss among the seafolk, and the deepening sense of mistrust that the seafolk harbour towards the State. Mixed methods have been employed, with quantitative data collected from 1271 households across the nine coastal districts of the state. Qualitative data was collected using in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and non-participant methods between 2022 and 2025. The results show that continuing with hard structures like seawalls and groynes has led to severe erosion along the Kerala coast, and that villages lying downdrift of such constructions including fishing harbours were at a significantly greater risk of being devastated by extreme weather events. The findings also show that the developmental discourse in Kerala, revolving around large constructions, marginalizes the seafolk even more, displacing them from their ancestral homesteads, pushing them into crushing debt, and causing immense distress. The situation has resulted in a situation where the seafolk’s trust in the state is on a downward spiral.