STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES PERTINENT TO PUBLIC SPACE FOR ADDRESSING FLOODS

An Assessment from Coastal Urban Slums in India

Abstract

Climate change and disasters are fast emerging as the most defining challenge of the 21^st century as global risk. Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been observed and linked with human influences, including an increase in extreme high sea levels and an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events. About 70 percent of the coastlines worldwide are projected to experience sea level change within 20 percent of the global mean. India, a developing country of global south and a major global contributor, is among the first ten countries in climate risk index. The country is witnessing average sea level rise of 1.7 mm/ year with rising sea projections in coastal cities. Further, India host a large percentage of urban population living in slums. Dharavi slum, Asia's biggest slum, located in the centre of Mumbai along the coast, host a population of more than a million in just 2.1 square kilometre. Slums are located at land which is usually unsuitable for formal development, being the low lying marshy areas along the river basins or coastal mangroves. As a direct cause, the physical location of the slums in developing world, makes them at a greater risk of flooding. Urban slums of metropolitan Mumbai, Kolkata and Surat in India, along with many others, are vulnerable to flooding. The present policy framework lack in providing for climate resilience and has thus compelled the slum dwellers to adapt to the risk of flooding with local community based measures involving public space retrofits.

The paper assess these adaptation measures and strategies from different coastal urban slums in India and aims to create a theoretical framework of measures and elements. Case study analysis approach is used to generate for adaptation strategies and presented in the parameters (type – time – role – intent and scale of adaptation). Results showcases a framework of adaptive and mitigation measures pertinent to local participation and public space retrofits for coastal urban slums. It enables the generation of a typology, lexicon of measures and elements, a toolkit to face extreme floods. Community mobilization with public space retrofits open new possibilities for addressing future floods and in gaining resilience.

Keywords: Adaptation, coping strategies, flood resilience in slums, public space retrofits.