The world’s urban population is expected to rise from 3.9 to 6.4 billion people between 2014 and 2050, with 90% of this increase in Asia and Africa (UN, 2014). While…
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN URBANISING CONTEXTS
Transforming Urban Governance to Manage Uncertainty and Climate Change in Mumbai, India
IDS Policy Briefing 148 Despite unprecedented wealth accumulation, coastal Mumbai suffers from a myriad of socioeconomic and ecological challenges as well as connected uncertainties. These include endemic flooding, shrinking of…
Making the most of peri-urban ecosystem services
Ecosystem services are vital for peri-urban and urbanising areas, and the people who live within them. In contexts of rapid urbanisation, these services are under threat from redevelopment, pollution and…
The Many Circuits of a Circular Economy
STEPS Working Paper 94 November 2017 Rapid urbanisation in India has led to the development of large urban agglomerations. These urban agglomerations, with dense concentration of population and economic activity,…
Towards a peri-urban political ecology of water quality decline
Recent years have witnessed an expanding body of peri-urban and urban scholarship. However, recent scholarship has yet to adequately address the central role of politics and power shaping water quality…
Peri-Urbanism in Globalizing India: A Study of Pollution, Health and Community Awareness
This paper examines the intersection between environmental pollution and people’s acknowledgements of, and responses to, health issues in Karhera, a former agricultural village situated between the rapidly expanding cities of…
Local Environmentalism in Peri-Urban Spaces in India: Emergent Ecological Democracy?
STEPS Working Paper 96 This paper explores the potential of a range of peri-urban environmentalisms to come together in support of sustainable urbanisation. The present-day ‘urban,’ along with the dominant…
Advancing Metrics: Models for understanding adaptive capacity and water security
Volume 21, August 2016, Pages 52–57 We explore the relationship between water security (WS) and adaptive capacity (AC); the two concepts are connected because achieving the first may be dependent…
Adapting to risk and perpetuating poverty: Household’s strategies for managing flood risk and water scarcity in Mexico City
Volume 66, December 2016, Pages 324–333 Adaptation is typically conceived uniquely in positive terms, however for some populations, investments in risk management can entail significant tradeoffs. Here we discuss the…
Opinion: Urban resilience efforts must consider social and political forces
Environmental disasters, ranging from catastrophic floods to extreme temperatures, have caused more than 30,000 deaths per year and more than US$ 250–300 billion a year in economic losses, globally, between…