Building Capacity for Adaptive Governance
through Participatory Modelling: Rural and Urban Flooding in
India
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Global environmental change processes like climate change challenges the continuation of top down practices of resource and knowledge management. The complexity of multiple drivers of place based vulnerabilities to such global challenges along with the lack of preciseness of climate related risks at the local level creates an uncertainty on the type and degree of its impacts. There is an undeniable need of guidance of science for appropriate targets for long-term adaptation interventions, but equally important are the lessons from practice for its acceptability in localities. In the midst of complex linkages between society and ecosystems and future uncertainty, there is a need of creating a better fit between science, policy and practice by introducing principles of learning and flexibility in public policy process. This project is a caapacity building exercise to usher the importance of shared vision by practicing co-management and offered hands-on training on participatory modelling to multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral groups of stakeholders to delineate drivers of flood, design responses to it and negotiate for a solution. The exercise illustrated the relevance of deliberation, by not only enabling comprehension of impacts from natural processes but also feedbacks of human actions, for influencing mind-sets. The process led to the understanding of the role of key factors like diagnosis, co-ordination and trust for triggering change in management approaches.
This program is sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) under their CAPaBLE programme.
About project
The main objectives of the project were
1
Create understanding of principles of adaptive governance among policy makers, practitioners and researchers in Assam and Karnataka in India 2
Provide hands-on training on participatory model building techniques and systems modelling tools 3
Provide operational framework for implementation of the principles in resource governance in India Project Members
- Navarun Varma, Associate Fellow, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, TERI
- Ulka Kelkar, Fellow, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, TERI
- Saurabh Bhardwaj, Associate Fellow, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, TERI
- Prasoon Singh, Research Associate, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, TERI
- Prof. Arabinda Mishra, Dean, Teri University, Delhi
Collaborators/Resource Persons
- Prof. S Ravi Rajan, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
- Dr. Vishal Narain, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India
- Prof. Kanchan Chopra, TERI University, New Delhi, India
- Dr. P.G. Dhar Chakrabarti, Distinguished Fellow, TERI, New Delhi, India
Publication(s)
Climate Change, Disasters and Development: Testing the Waters for Adaptive Governance in India
The study illustrates the importance of adaptive governance paradigm as an approach for bringing coherence between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in India.
Read more
Program Activities
Guwahati workshop
A 4-day workshop on the topic-“Systems Thinking and Adaptive Governance -The Context of Flood in Lakhimpur District, Assam” was organized from 28th to 31st January at TERI North Eastern Regional Centre, Guwahati. The workshop had a mix of panel discussion, lectures and introduced techniques of participatory systems modeling which helped stakeholders to understand issues of flood from different perspectives, learn about challenges posed by uncertainty and strategize accordingly. It provided an opportunity to learn theory and practice of systems thinking and network with peers from civil society, academia and government.
Bangalore Workshop
A 2 day workshop on-“Systems Thinking and Adaptive Governance: The Context of Urban Flooding and Water Stress in Bangalore” was organized in TERI Bangalore from24th to 25th April. The workshop had a lecture series spread across 2 days and introduced techniques of participatory systems modelling which helped stakeholders to understand linkages across issues of water logging, water scarcity and infrastructure development and learn about challenges posed by uncertainty. Like Guwahati workshop, it also provided an opportunity to learn theory and practice of systems thinking and network with peers from civil society, academia and government.
Delhi Workshop
A final workshop was conducted on August 20th in TERI, New Delhi. This workshop–“Policy dialogue on Operationalizing Adaptive Governance in India” introduced the findings to a wider group of stakeholders from the national level and held a brainstorming on questions framed around common themes- “Misdiagnosis, Communication, Labelling and Mistrust” that were diagnosed as barriers for shared vision for management of floods in both rural and urban contexts in India.
Contact us
Saurabh Bhardwaj
Fellow
Center for Global Environment Research, Earth Science and Climate Change Division
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Darbari Seth Block, Indian Habitat Center, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003, India
Email: saurabh.bhardwaj@teri.res.in T: 91-11-24682100/11, 41504900 (Extn. 2303) M: 9911055559 Fax: 91-11-24682144/2145