Urban climate resilience : a review of the methodologies adopted under the ACCCRN initiative in Indian cities / Divya Sharma, Raina Singh, Rozita Singh

Includes bibliographical references.

Cities across the world have started recognising the need to address urban climate vulnerabilities. In Asia, the role of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN), a nine-year initiative (2008-2017) supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, has been significant. Over the years, ACCCRN has worked in ten cities in four Asian countries (India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam) on developing and demonstrating effective processes and practices for addressing urban climate vulnerabilities. This Working Paper aims to document and analyse the several methodologies adopted in the seven Indian ACCCRN cities: Surat, Indore, Gorakhpur, Shimla, Bhubaneswar, Mysore, Guwahati. The paper analyses these methodologies and the overall process adopted in each of these cities for its potential for replication in other cities in India, and brings out the inherent challenges, gaps and opportunities in achieving this. The study indicates that the overall process adopted was unique in each of the cities and that differences in the methodologies have arisen due to a number of contextual factors in each of the cities, including existing governance structures, industrial makeup, population and demographic conditions, as well as the implementing partners’ prior experience and level of comfort with quantitative and qualitative assessments. Data availability and inter-departmental coordination were quoted as some of the key challenges experienced by the implementing partners. In addition, lack of implementation support in terms of policy mandates, financial support, capacity building were cited as key challenges by the city level stakeholders involved throughout this process. Drawing from these experiences, and with the aim of overcoming these challenges, this paper contributes recommendations on various stages of resilience planning exercises which would be beneficial to cities that plan to undertake such planning in the future. These recommendations will guide cities on how to use the processes and methodologies developed as part of ACCCRN.