Water Is Not the Enemy: Creating Space for Bayou Futures Against Narratives of Climate Despair

This work aims to muddy the boundaries between water, land, and lives in southeastern Louisiana to show how rising water is not an inherent threat to life but part of a complex socioecosystem and practice of living. Drawing broadly from feminist and queer geographies, I use mixed research methods to understand how people experience changing ecology in the context of both daily living and broader crisis conditions. I use semi-structured interviews and sketch mapping exercises to explore how multitudes of socioecological relationships coexist in Southeastern Louisiana at different scales. Reframing coastal Louisiana as a queer socioecosystem in transition, rather than a doomed place on a terminal trajectory, creates avenues for envisioning futures beyond mainstream narratives of the climate crisis.