My City My Responsibility - Being local specific!

Dear All,

Every year we conduct pilot studies as part of the Sustainably Smart Pune 2030 study project, through an internship program. This year we could conduct studies on local climate vulnerability and I would like to share some of the insights of this study. 

By now, we all are aware of the impacts climate change is creating in our lives. We as Indians are definitely climate vulnerable and hence it is crucial for us to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies in order to survive. Though globally we are vulnerable, we wanted to check how vulnerable we are in the local context and specifically in an urban setting. For the same, we undertook a random survey of thirty households in selected areas of Kothrud, Aundh and Kasba Peth wards, with the help of three interns. Exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are the three core aspects that help determine vulnerability. We considered exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity through factors like rainfall, flooding, temperature rise, population, socioeconomic conditions, governance, infrastructure, waste management, awareness on climate change etc and rated these factors on the scale of one to five, where one indicated low impact and five higher impact. These ratings were based on observations, local conditions, responses of the people and secondary data. According to the vulnerability assessment studies, higher exposure and sensitivity coupled with lower adaptive capacity causes vulnerability. After analyzing all the numbers, we found that the numbers for adaptive capacity were much lower than we thought, which means that these areas are certainly vulnerable. This according to us was an interesting find since we live in an urban setting where we have access to all the necessary facilities and still we are locally vulnerable to climate change. 

Understanding the severity of climate change impacts locally is indeed the first step for developing adaptation strategies as an immediate action while Sustainably planning our upcoming cities will help us mitigate the impacts of climate change in the future!

Aspects of Climate vulnerability 

Household survey

This work was done by our interns Kasturi, Shivani and Aishwarya, who are studying Architecture.

I feel that undertaking local specific surveys for local specific actions are one of the ways to find appropriate solutions for a Sustainable city.  We are conducting similar study for an alternate riverfront development plan and I will share the insights of the same soon. Stay tuned!

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com