Gomes, S.L. (2022). Interventions to Strengthen Institutional Capacity for Peri-Urban Water Management in South Asia. In: Narain, V., Roth, D. (eds) Water Security, Conflict and Cooperation in Peri-Urban South Asia. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79035-6_8
Institutions, defined as social rules which guide decision-making, are an important feature of peri-urban water governance. Peri-urban institutions structure the access to and management of water resources during rural-to-urban transitions. However, peri-urban areas are dynamic in nature and heterogeneous in composition. This generates challenges for the effectiveness of institutional arrangements. Peri-urban spaces of South Asian cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Khulna demonstrate the various ways in which institutional arrangements influence issues of water insecurity, conflicts, and crises in the urbanisation process. This chapter explores this important dimension and demonstrates ways to intervene in the institutional context of water resources in such transitional settings. Two types of interventions to build institutional capacity are presented. First, the Approach for Participatory Institutional Analysis (APIA), is designed to help peri-urban actors frame problems through an institutional lens and offers skills to navigate the solution space. The second approach, Transformative Pathways, facilitates efforts to cope with the uncertain and dynamic nature of urban transitions. Based on the adaptation pathways approach, it helps peri-urban actors work from their existing situation and design pathways towards more sustainable and resilient futures. Practical applications of these approaches in South Asia offer insights on how to intervene institutionally in water problems during rural-urban transitions.
This chapter and the book from which it is taken is available as an Open Access download here.
India is currently being fundamentally transformed by urbanization. This transformation does not only affect the cities themselves: it also affects the periurban areas around cities. These areas are currently experiencing fundamental transformations that will shape India’s (urban) future.
The H2O-T2S project team has prepared a policy report recognizing the periurban challenges and transformative initiatives and pathways emerging from a range of sectors in this region. The policy brief combines four thematic policy briefs on four specific aspects of periurban transformations – water, infrastructure & governance, gender, and disaster risk, as well as three case studies on periurban transformation pathways.
These four sections were developed based on research, practices, and case studies presented at the conference on ‘Transforming Periurban Futures in India’ that took place on January 18-19, 2022.
This emerging knowledge from stakeholder engagements and field research finds that challenges induced by periurban transformations, while not easy to solve, offer immense opportunities. These dynamics must not only be seen negatively. They will result in adverse development if they take place in an unregulated manner, but the dynamics also allow for quickly steering development in a direction that allows for a transformation to sustainability. Essential in this regard is a solid database for planning, participatory planning processes, a robust institutional and financial framework and, most importantly, joint visions for sustainable development pathways.
These insights for policy are communicated online both through individual thematic policy briefs as well as a compiled Policy Report.
Download the report.
The Anthropology of Resource Extraction (Routledge, 2022) synthesizes and analyses a range of anthropological debates about the ways in which different actors extract, use, manage, and think about resources. Resources play a crucial role in the contemporary economy and society, are required in the production of a vast range of consumer products and are at the core of geopolitical strategies and environmental concerns for the future of humanity. Scholars have widely debated the economic and sociological aspects of resource management, however, anthropologists offer different and fresh perspectives based on field research conducted in close contact with those actors that manipulate, anticipate, fight for, or resist the extractive processes in many creative ways.
Edited by Lorenzo D’Angelo and Robert Jan Pijpers of the GOLD MATTERS project.
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