For decades to come, cost-effective and environmentally appropriate water systems will be a priority for managing water scarcity and building resilience in the rapidly expanding cities and city regions of South Asia. This study initiates a research into urban local ponds and the potential of linking them with water systems and build resilience. A framework of questions guided the research with reference to ponds and prevalent water systems in South Asian cities and city regions. The wider issues of water stress in South Asian cities and the general limitations of prevalent water supply systems were studied through the lens of a literature review. The paper then draws upon observations in three South Asian cities. The research showed that despite policy support for local rainwater capture, groundwater is over-exploited and urban local ponds (and tanks) have not been integrated with urban water provision schemes, particularly in recent decades. It was concluded that local urban ponds can facilitate resilient water-supply provision by making them an integral part of the urban waterscape. This paper highlights a multitude of benefits that ponds can potentially bring to urban resilience, in particular affordable and accessible water provision with low environmental footprint, managing climate shocks or stresses, biodiversity restoration in urban areas as well as potentially generating new skills and livelihoods for communities. The overall suggestion is that local urban ponds should be networked into the water provision for cities and their wider region, thereby linking to wider arrangements for urban and regional governance and resilience.
India’s urban assets and populations are highly vulnerable to a multitude of natural hazards, climate variability and environmental change. This can well impact on the entire nation, as economic output comes primarily from in and around its urban settlements. Empirical evidence from recent disasters, despite some major successes, reinforces the limited preparedness of Indian towns and cities to withstand multiple hazards such as fires, floods, extreme temperatures, earthquakes and strong winds. Unregulated growth and the quality of built environment are among a host of factors that have resulted in this vulnerability to disaster events. The research issue that this paper addresses is that of enabling the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) to implement disaster risk reduction and recovery framework(s) developed and agreed on at the national and sub-national levels. This paper highlights capacity challenges within local government for managing natural disasters amongst wider challenges of service provision. The paper draws upon empirical observations to argue that despite their best intentions ULBs are currently constrained in implementing the extensive comprehensive disaster risk & recovery approach driven by a multiplicity of national and multilateral policies. The paper provides observations from the Kosi River flooding disaster (2008) in Bihar state to illustrate this point. The paper further highlights that while this situation will not change overnight there are a number of practical opportunities to support ULBs in making an immediate start and superimpose risk reduction onto development programmes.
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