How to tackle complexity in urban climate resilience? Negotiating climate science, adaptation and multi-level governance in India [original]

RESEARCH ARTICLE

How to tackle complexity in urban climate

resilience? Negotiating climate science,

adaptation and multi-level governance in

India

Mahendra SethiID

1,2,3

*, Richa Sharma

, Subhakanta MohapatraID

, Shilpi Mittal

3,6

1Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 2Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and

Climate Change, Berlin, Germany, 3Indian Society for Applied Research & Development, New Delhi, India,

4India Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, India, 5School of Sciences, Indira Gandhi National

Open University, New Delhi, India, 6G.D. Goenka University, Gurugram, Haryana, India

*m.sethi@campus.tu-berlin.de

Abstract

As the world’s population is expected to be over 2/3

urban by 2050, climate action in cities

is a growing area of interest in the inter-disciplines of development policy, disaster mitigation

and environmental governance. The climate impacts are expected to be quite severe in the

developing world, given its urban societies are densely packed, vastly exposed to natural

elements while possessing limited capabilities. There is a notable ambiguity and complexity

that inhibits a methodical approach in identifying urban resilience measures. The complexity

is due to intersection of large number of distinct variables in climate geoscience (precipita-

tion and temperature anomalies at different locations, RCPs, timeline), adaptation alterna-

tives (approach, priority, intervention level) and urban governance (functional mandate,

institutional capacity, and plans & policies). This research examines how disparate and

complex knowledge and information in these inter-disciplines can be processed for system-

atic ‘negotiation’ to situate, ground and operationalize resilience in cities. With India as a

case, we test this by simulating mid-term and long-run climate scenarios (2050 & 2080) to

map regional climate impacts that shows escalation in the intensity of climate events like

heat waves, urban flooding, landslides and sea level rise. We draw on suitable adaptation

measures for five key urban sectors- water, infrastructure (including energy), building, urban

planning, health and conclude a sleuth of climate resilience building measures for policy

application through national/ state policies, local urban plans and preparation of city resil-

ience strategy, as well as advance the research on ‘negotiated resilience’ in urban areas

1. Introduction

Climate action in urban areas is a growing area of interest in the inter-disciplines of develop-

ment policy, disaster mitigation and environmental governance [1–3]. By 2050, the world’s

population is expected to be 68% urban [4], flaring concerns on how rapidly growing, yet

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OPEN ACCESS

Citation: Sethi M, Sharma R, Mohapatra S, Mittal S

(2021) How to tackle complexity in urban climate

resilience? Negotiating climate science, adaptation

and multi-level governance in India. PLoS ONE

16(7): e0253904. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.

pone.0253904

Editor: Ghaffar Ali, Shenzhen University, CHINA

Received: October 12, 2020

Accepted: June 13, 2021

Published: July 1, 2021

access article distributed under the terms of the

Creative Commons Attribution License, which

permits unrestricted use, distribution, and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original

author and source are credited.

Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are

within the paper and its Supporting Information

files.

Funding: The first author acknowledges the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the

generous research fellowship.

Competing interests: The authors have declared

that no competing interests exist.

financially incapacitated cities would respond to climate impacts, particularly in the develop-

ing world [5–7]. These impacts would be quite severe in Asia, given its urban societies are

densely packed, vastly exposed to natural elements while possessing limited capabilities [8–

10]. The last decade has witnessed a growing role of cities in the global energy, environment

and sustainability policies [3,11–14], yet the effective pursuit of urban resilience in developing

contexts lacks sufficient scientific rigor and policy clarity at the implementation level. The

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its last two scien-

tific assessments, most notably in AR5 [3], exhaustively covered global policies and scholarly

literature on how urban systems worldwide are combating climate impacts, the intervening

barriers and knowledge gaps. Despite the original focus on mitigation in science-policy dis-

course in urban systems [15,16], latest bibliometric analysis of urban climate change literature

shows that adaptation is now receiving considerable attention [17]. The local climate plans

usually identify adaptation pathways for specific climate hazards in an urban sector for e.g.

floods. An assessment of climate action tools relevant to urban areas reports that 39% urban

climate tools are adaptation centric [18].

In practice, adaptation and resilience accounts for a marginal 12.1% of the global urban ini-

tiatives [19], although the need of having a science-based policy approach in greater under-

standing urban vulnerabilities and shaping appropriate responses has been constantly

emphasized [20–22]. There is a notable ambiguity and complexity that inhibits a methodical

approach in identifying public management of urban resilience measures. The complexity is

due to intersection of large number of distinct variables in climate geoscience (precipitation

and temperature anomalies at different locations, RCPs, timeline), adaptation alternatives

(approach, priority, intervention level) and urban governance (functional mandate, institu-

tional capacity, and plans & policies). This creates an ambiguity in answering the following key

research-policy questions: (a) what are the downscaled climate scenarios and how these per-

petuate regional vulnerabilities? (b) how to identify and prioritize adaptation options across

different sectors?, (c) how to strategically integrate climate actions with multi-level policies

and governance, particularly at the urban level.?

The complex situation necessitates a planned and methodical approach in devising a cli-

mate-resilient urban future [23] that underscores the process of ‘negotiation’ to situate, ground

and operationalize ‘resilience’. The concept puts particular accent on the procedural orienta-

tion of resilience–it is not something that ‘exists’ and that we can uniformly define, rather it is

a process that requires engagement with diverse actors and interests, both in specific places

and across scales. We internalize this process of engagement in the research methodology by

examining how disparate and complex knowledge and information in the inter-disciplines of

climate geoscience, adaptation, and policy & governance be systematically processed to arrive

at urban resilience measures. We test this by mapping mid-term and long-run climate scenar-

ios (2050 & 2080) in a rapidly developing context like India as a case to map regional climate

impacts, evaluate plausible adaptation measures to negotiate suitable urban resilience mecha-

nisms within the current multi-level governance system. Unlike more technocratic (top-

down) approaches in evaluating climate responses, our approach engages with their diverse

interests, mandates, policies and capacities of local stakeholders to deal with climate resilience

issues evident across the national and urban landscape.

Climate change impacts in India are already being felt and impacting human life and liveli-

hoods of many. Hundreds of people are losing their lives and falling ill due to the intensive

heat waves during summers every year [24]. The population in Indian cities is vulnerable to

floods that are detrimental to the economy, lives, and livelihoods, and thousands are being ren-

dered homeless while losing their possessions and assets [7]. The intense rain and extensive

flash flood episodes in Mumbai, Srinagar, Chennai, Bengaluru, etc. in the last one decade have

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revealed what mayhem and misery climate hazards could unfold in large settlements. Being

prepared and resilient to climate change should therefore be a high priority for cities when

planning for development and this requires a better understanding of climate impacts and

actions at different levels- national, state, regional, local, neighbourhood, building and individ-

ual level. The complete absence of a nation-wide urbanization policy and the uncertainties in

local implementation of an obsolete national climate policy makes this enquiry even more

challenging and opportune. For example, India formulated the National Climate Change

Action Plan (NAPCC) in 2008 [25], wherein eight missions have been identified for mitigation

and adaption actions, including for sustainable habitat, water, Himalayan ecosystem, green

India and sustainable agriculture. The states are supposed to implement these keeping in view

their own vulnerabilities and priorities. But in practice, this approach lacks knowledge on

regional climate scenarios and their specific impacts. At the same time, the sectoral policies on

environment, water, sanitation, energy and transport are not framed to specifically deal with

climate change. With India urbanizing rapidly, cities need to become more responsive and

resilient to climate impacts on five crucial urban sectors, namely water, infrastructure, build-

ings, urban planning and health. As per the local regulations (discussed in the governance sec-

tion, energy is not a municipal subject, thus specific resilience related energy issues have been

dealt within respective urban sectors, for e.g. infrastructure, buildings, etc. This investigation

would thus serve to address these complex issues and challenges by testing how scientific

knowledge on regional climate variabilities, theory and methods for adaptation measures and

governance systems can be reasonably utilized to mainstream climate resilience in urban

areas.

2. Review of literature

The process of implementing urban resilience theories is a complex and an evolving process.

even more cumbersome in developing contexts, where lack of access to adequate, reliable

infrastructure & urban services continues to impede the economic growth [26], while national

environmental objectives and local governance issues are a key concern that not just under-

mine the climate cause, but associated direct, in-direct and ancillary benefits too [27]. Several

studies in the last decade [28–32] have used diverse methods to demonstrate climate impacts

on urban systems, owing to multiple exposures yet there is no universal framework to analyze

urban climate resilience. According to Hammer et al. (2011) [33], there are three distinct

approaches. The first is the coping/reduced sensitivity or engineering resilience approach that

emphasizes the importance of relatively short term means of enhancing strength, fortification

and resistance of the critical infrastructure in urban systems [34–36]. Coping approaches

bring immediate benefits that tend to diminish with new and diversified disasters and hence

incur higher costs overtime. The second set of approach emphasize the application of climate

projections to determine future risks and the identification of specific measures for responding to

these [37–39]. The typical methodology follows prediction, prevention and making policies,

practices and plans in order to avoid negative impacts of climate change [40]. In recent years,

the Local Climate Zones system and its mapping emerged as an important approach to study

the variations of local climates at the sub-national level [41]. Even though such a scientifically

planned approach can help prevent losses and prepare for the changing climate, still adapta-

tion cannot avoid all the impacts due to various limitations, which arise from socio-technical

and governance related issues. Thus, a third set of framework argues complex urban systems

to strategically build ‘adaptive capacity’ in order to manage unanticipated stresses and shocks

[32,42–44]. It closely aligns with the core idea of enhancing climate resilience, understood as

the ability of a system or society exposed to hazards to resist,absorb and recover from its effects

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in a timely and efficient manner,including through the preservation and restoration of its essen-

tial basic structures and functions [45,46].

There is growing knowledge on the theory, methods, and practice of resilience across a vari-

ety of country and case contexts, that demonstrates how a resilience-based approach can help

further improve infrastructure, vibrant societies, and sustainable environments and ecologies,

among many others [47]. At the same time, it is pertinent to explore how pursuing urban resil-

ience would be different from implementing climate adaptation measures in cities. Adaptation

and resilience are two concepts originally developed in dissimilar problem contexts but which

are of significant importance for our ability to respond to a changing climate. A better appreci-

ation of the relationship between the concepts of adaptation and resilience will provide more

effective tools to plan for, and respond to, current and future change [48]. This research makes

an attempt in this direction as we focus on how could climate resilience be pursued in urban

areas while considering adaptation alternatives, in addition to several other complex variables

in climate geoscience and urban governance (discussed above).

Drawing from [23,31,48], we understand negotiated resilience from the perspective of

incessant development policy and local governance based on localized climate change studies

that offer clear benefits while employing downscaled Regional Concertation Pathways (RCPs)

to establish a scientific justification for local adaptation policy.

However, in contrast to risk management, comprehensive approaches to assessing resil-

ience at appropriate and operational scales, reconciling analytical complexity as needed with

stakeholder needs and resources available, and ultimately creating actionable recommenda-

tions to enhance resilience are still evolving [49]. The 4×4 Resilience Matrix is one such frame-

work for the performance assessment of integrated complex through an adverse event, where

the rows describe the four general management domains of any complex system: physical,

information, cognitive, social and the columns describe plan/prepare, absorb/withstand,

recover, adapt [50]. Through case studies of cities, such tools have been used to organize the

many government agencies and community institutions across different spatial scales that con-

tribute to the operation of each critical service. In this research, we try to upscale similar tools

for country-wide application in response to future climate scenarios, thereby arriving at entry

points for mainstreaming resilience at various levels of governance, and incorporation of cli-

mate resilience building measures into different types of local/ urban plans.

3. Data and methods

Based on the above theories, we formulate an integrated analytical framework (Fig 1), with the

following techniques (and data) outlined to be performed sequentially:

3.1. Multi-level governance assessment

We draw from secondary sources of information spanning from 1992 to 2020, essentially in

the form of policy studies and peer-reviewed papers, to conduct a qualitative assessment of

multi-level governance systems, especially relevant to urban areas [10,28,51,52]. This assess-

ment of the state of the affairs on the ground focuses on three core governance domains,

namely functional mandate, plans and policies, and institutional capacities of Indian cities.

3.2. Simulating local climate scenarios

Using data from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) on their climate data

portal [53], we retrieved the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 climate scenarios from the Coordinated Regional

Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX. Here, we utilize techniques for downscaling global cli-

mate forecasts [54–56], mapping regional temperature (˚C) and precipitation changes (in

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mm/day) across different geographic regions in Arc Map (version 10.2) for 2030, 2050 & 2080

and geocoding, super-imposition of cities for their vulnerability assessment [57]. The data

sources and technique are elaborated in S1 Appendix.

3.3. Assessment of adaptation alternatives

On the basis of analyzing long-term forecasted climate scenarios and governance capacity of

Indian cities, we identify adaptation options for definite climate impacts (temperature rise and

extreme rainfall as the two primary ones, and sea-level rise and landslide as the secondary ones)

for five key urban sectors in India, namely water, infrastructure, buildings, urban planning and

health. In doing so, we refer to urban adaptation assessment and prioritization methods [3,58–

60]. We evaluate these on the basis of (1) priority (medium, high, very high), (2) implementation

time (short-, mid- and long-term) and (3) intervention level (State, city, sub-city, building, etc.).

3.4. Negotiating resilience into governance

Based on definite adaptation measures in key urban sectors, we infer specific policy actions

and governance mechanisms to be undertaken by different stakeholders at multiple scales. We

expand matrix methods used in individual cities [50] to infer negotiated climate resilience

measures for national, state and local levels of governance, particularly focusing on their inter-

nalization into different types of urban policies and plans.

4. Discussion of results

4.1. Multi-level governance assessment in India

The multi-level governance of environment and climate identifies the gaps and needs in the

functional mandates, plans and policies, and the institutional capacities of Indian cities, as

elaborated:

Fig 1. Theoretical framework for integrating climate science, adaptation theory and urban governance to deal

with complex issues in urban resilience.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253904.g001

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