Overcoming Barriers to Urban Flood Resilience: A Case of Hyderabad, India

Abstract

Cities are increasingly faced with frequent floods disrupting everyday lives. Adapting to flood risks and conserving eco-sensitive sites are central to social ecological resilience. Rapidly expanding cities are found short of mitigating the adverse environmental impacts. For enhancing flood resilience, it is important to understand the interaction of the key stakeholders and its impact on governance and land use in the cities. Land use change in urban space is constantly influenced by negotiations among various interest groups. The urban governance structures are increasingly dominated by neoliberal approaches of profit maximization. Following a heuristic framework for policy analysis of land use change and governance, the present study assesses the barriers in building flood resilient cities. We apply the framework to Hyderabad city of Telangana, India, which has faced the recurring challenge of flooding. Results demonstrate the lack of urgency in implementing disaster management initiatives and contradictions in existing policies. This study points out the redundancy of elected municipal bodies for taking flood resilience measures, due to increasing proliferation of nondemocratic administrative bodies and underlines the need to bridge the gap through agendas cutting across sectors and institutions.