ACCCRN India: Synthesis Report – Volume I
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Table 2.2 offers opportunities for the cities to address the challenges through better governance and use
of technologies. Considering the current institutional capacities and constraints, it may be necessary
to involve civil society as well as private sector in facing these growing challenges across sectors.
The framework enables unbundling these issues to understand the impacts of delayed decisions so that the
city administrators can understand the consequences of lack of timely action in future by looking back at
legacy issues being faced today.
2.7 URBAN GROWTH AND INCREASING RISK PROFILE
Most of the cities of the country have evolved from historic small towns formed along river banks, trade
centres, administrative centres or army cantonments. At the time of their formation, pumping and long
distance water conveyance technologies did not exist; local access to year round water was one of the main
considerations for the formation and survival of these towns.
The technological as well socio-economic context of the cities have changed over time, resulting in
discordance between the geo-physical, hydrological and landuse context. As these towns expanded, the new
infrastructure like bridges and water supply systems based on distant sources were developed so that
these cities could expand to sizes beyond their local resource base. Also, the cities expanded to both banks
of the river, constricting the lood plains. To overcome occasional looding, embankments were built which
further constrained the natural low and resulted in siltation of river beds. For improvement of water
supply, barrages were built. The lood risks increased due to these anthropogenic changes in river hydrology.
This has increased the lood risk of many river-bank cites like Delhi, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Pune, Surat,
Cuttack, Kolkata etc. Also the problems of inadequate storm water drainage and illing of traditional water
storage reservoirs which acted as buffers within the city have increased the pluvial lood risks. The
Restriction imposed by master planning process e.g. low FSI limits has led to increased house prices and
has indirectly forced the poor to settle in peripheries marginalized areas like drainage lines and differentially
higher lood prone areas with little or no protection. Most of the cities are likely to expand over the next few
decades and the risk proile is likely to change towards worse, unless the land use planning is informed by the
changes in hydrology and climate variability issues. As mentioned earlier, the private sector and individual
household led expansion of peripheral areas without developing regional infrastructure networks are likely
to increase the risk proiles. It may be noted that this increase in risk proile is unrelated with the climate
change.
2.8 URBAN CLIMATE CHANGE RISK
