Barriers and enablers of local adaptive measures: a case study of Bengaluru’s informal settlement dwellers

Abstract

Cities, with their increasing populations, are host to a range of issues including non-climatic factors due to the prevailing development paradigm, discriminatory urbanisation patterns, and weak governance structures. Climate change poses an additional challenge and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities affecting cities and its people, especially the urban poor. This paper highlights the barriers and enablers to climate change-related adaptation experienced in some of Bengaluru's informal settlements. The barriers described in the paper include economic, social, governance and information related issues that impede local actions and increase vulnerabilities. Enabling factors such as improving social and human capital, gaining formal recognition and most importantly support from agencies (e.g. local government, civil societies, and community leaders), help overcome some of the barriers or challenges. Hence, local level adaptation measures mainstreamed with local developmental agendas help address some of the structural causes of vulnerability. Contextual policies and interventions can facilitate successful local level adaptation measures.

Assessing the state of the art in community engagement for participatory decision-making in disaster risk-sensitive urban development

“…Low levels of literacy and numeracy and the dominance of oral culture among communities [ 24 , 26 , 27 , 29 , 47 ] 5 10% 8 6. Cultural norms and life circumstances (inconsistency with community traditions) [ 6 , 27 , 29 , 42 ] 4 8% 9 7. Negative community perceptions of participation in the planning system [ 24 , 28 , 43 ] 3 6% 10 8.…”

“…Some community members (political followers) involved in informal political networks to gain own personal benefits rather than having a collective and long-term approach for urban development [ 32 ] 1 2% 12 Organisational culture, attitudes, and knowledge 1. Continuous top-down and centralised management of government authorities [ 6 , 25 , 33 , 41 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ] 9 18% 4 2. Lack of organisational commitment for engaging communities [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 33 , 36 , 37 , 59 , 60 ] 9 18% 4 3.…”

“…The information gap between citizens and the government: citizens’ lack awareness of government meetings, familiarity with government officials, or knowledge about government affairs [ 24 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 30 , 45 , 52 , 64 ] 8 16% 5 3. Limited financial resources for supporting community participation [ 6 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 31 , 40 , 62 ] 7 14% 6 4. Limited resources for participation: lack of knowledgeable and experienced professionals, venues, and material for workshops [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 36 , 54 ] 6 12% 7 5.…”

“…As a result, government policies are being implemented giving little consideration to local knowledge of vulnerable communities [ 3 , 5 ]. Consequently, community knowledge and their concerns of disaster risks in the locality are being ignored in urban planning and development projects [ 3 , 6 , 7 ], hence failing to capture locally significant factors. This state poses a challenge for achieving equitable and sustainable developments that address the concerns of vulnerable communities since only the governmental strategies which are typically concerned with economic growth are given priority.…”

Tracking the progress of climate change adaptation: An Australian case study

“…A widelyrecognised aspect of adaptation is that there is often a strong emphasis on planning, and many insightful and comprehensive plans exist. However, barriers emerge when transitioning from planning to implementation (Waters et al 2014;Deshpande et al 2019;Shi 2019), such that clear, observable action does not necessarily emerge to build on the planning stage (Mimura et al 2014). Mogelgaard et al (2018) termed this the 'implementation gap' and identified four requirements to bridge that gap: finance, policy frameworks, information and tools, and leadership.…”