Community-based Climate Action Plan in Urban Poor Settlements of Bhopal

What is the humanitarian need?

The project will make efforts to build the resilience of the inhabitants of informal settlements, who are the most vulnerable communities, against climate change impacts. The issues raised by the communities such as, protection against vector borne diseases, water scarcity, sanitation, cleanliness and frequent flooding will be addressed.

What is the innovative solution?

Resilience Capacities is defined as the ability of communities to survive, adapt and progress in the face of stress, without distress or loss of assets, while improving their current level of livelihood and health status. We aim to build capacities which will be evolutionary in nature with an increase in risk retention capacities; improved access to basic services (like water, sanitation, adequate shelter and health) and a continued effort to transform to a threshold level of livelihood security.

This project will build capacity of female members of Community Action Groups, who will draft their own plans and start implementation towards Climate Resilience.

What are the expected outcomes?

The project will pilot bottom-up ecological resilience planning in three urban poor settlements of Bhopal through the articulation of community-based climate action plans, completed in three stages: develop, test, and learn. In the develop stage, context specific imperatives, knowledge and capacities shall be recorded from the settlements to design and refine the interventions. In the test stage, community awareness of climate change induced heat stress will be built and leveraged towards the identification of socio-ecological innovations at the household, settlement, and settlement-city levels. This stage will also entail consultation workshops with community and city stakeholders, followed by the revision and finalisation of the plans itself.  The learn stage shall focus on collating the insights gained through these pilots, to outline a flexible and replicable framework for bottom-up ecological resilience planning across urban poor settlements in Bhopal.