Exploring co-production in redirecting climate urbanism

ABSTRACT

Intensifying climate change and its impact on urban areas has led to the emergence of the climate urbanism model that advocates action at the intersection of urban development and climate change. The model has presented itself varyingly across geographies. While offering an opportunity for inclusionary development in some, in others it has exacerbated social injustice. In India, it echoes the flawed top-down, largely context-blind approach to urban planning, thus exacerbating urbanisation induced exclusions. Drawing on our involvement in the evolution of Community-based Climate Action Plans in Bhopal, India, the paper advocates for co-production as a pathway to inclusive climate urbanism. Given the ability of co-production to democratically improve services for and agency of the marginalised, the paper evidences the efficacy of co-production on (a) an equal acknowledgement of the strengths and limitations of the co-production partners, thereby facilitating negotiations on how and who would bridge these limitations; (b) negotiations that allow for the resolution of challenges and embedded power hierarchies between stakeholders; (c) the integration of climate and development actions as against a mere superimposition of the former onto development agendas; and; (d) the crucial role of decentralized local area engagement, one that affords the marginalized an agency to plan for themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate urbanism
• climate action plan
• bottom-up planning approaches
• co-production
• collaboration
• urban poor
• urban planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These include C40 Cities, the Sustainable Cities Institute, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN); research-oriented groups like the World Resource Institute and Climate Action Network and investment-oriented agencies such as 100 Resilient Cities and World Bank Resilient Cities Programme; corporates, universities, think tanks, NGOs, global financial institutions and development agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund amongst others.

2 The edited volume Climate Urbanism: Towards a Critical Research Agenda (Castán Broto et al., 2020b) brings together a collection of essays exploring climate urbanism. As the research on climate urbanism expands, clearly, there are many threads and leads that remain unexplored. Notably, the critical role of state or market actors in shaping climate urbanism is one such unexplored agenda (Bhardwaj, 2021).

3 Nabatchi et al. (2017), Alford (2014) and various other scholars have traced the evolution of the co-production concept over the years. This paper does not intend to reiterate this trajectory for the risk of repetition.

4 The term ‘commissioning’ is used to indicate “what needs to be delivered, to whom and to achieve what outcomes” rather than its usual connotation of “core public sector task [to be] undertaken by politicians and top managers”. Co-design refers to incorporating “the experience of users and their communities” into creation or planning of services, co-delivery as the joint activities between state and lay actors to provide or improve services and co-assess as one that focuses on monitoring and evaluating public services.

5 For more details on cities as members of transnational networks that work in adopting and driving a climate change agenda see Fisher, 2014; Bahadur & Tanner, 2014; Chu, 2018.

6 Three settlements, each with a different socio-spatial context was selected for the study. The first in a commercial area close to the largest lake in the city, the second, in a commercial area close to a nala (open drain) and the third in an industrial area adjacent to a small lake.

7 The NGO facilitates the formation of Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) and Community Action Groups (CAGs) for slums. CBO is a membership based group which aims to cover all the families residing in a slum. For ease of engagement, for bigger slums are often divided area-wise to form multiple CBOs in the same slum. Each CBO thus consists of 200–250 families. The CBO members are then encouraged to identify women leaders from among themselves as members of the CAGs- and ensuring representation from different streets/lanes/social groups within the slum. Each CAG develops as a team of 10–15 women leaders get together to work for their own communities.

8 The engagement tool deployed by the NGO/CBO was CBVAT (Community Based Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit).

9 BHEL, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited is an Indian central public sector undertaking under the ownership of the Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India. The BHEL in Bhopal was established in 1964.

10 Several other socio-political events also contributed to the expansion and densification of these settlements. Prominent amongst these are the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, following which Indranagar densified. Similarly, following the 1992 riots, Indranagar once again experienced an in migration of Hindu community from the old parts of Bhopal.

11 LST is the temperature of the top surface of the earth which is in direct contact with the measuring instrument.

12 These include the State Action Plan for Climate Change (SAPCC V 2.0), Madhya Pradesh and District Climate Change and Environment Action Plan (CCEAP), 2022 for Bhopal.

13 What stood out from the mapping exercise were the missing linkages between climate action efforts and that of development planning for the city. These linkages become especially critical considering the legal backing that a development plan of a city enjoys (under the M.P. Nagar Tatha Gram Nivesh Adhiniyam, 1973). Hence, the findings, recommendations and pathways identified in plans like City Climate Action Plan (by EPCO) and the more recent City Sustainable Strategy (by the Municipal Corporation) should feed into/integrate with the development plan. Such a move will assist in addressing two critical challenges. To begin with, on the one hand, it will allow climate change priorities to be reflected in and aligned cohesively to the vision of the city and the ensuing development programmes and projects. On the other, it will allow foregrounding city ecologies within Master Plans.

Additional information

Funding

The research underpinning for this article was supported by, in part, by ELRHA's Humanitarian Innovation Fund, administered by SEEDS India and received by our partner MHT, India.

Notes on contributors

Anjali Karol Mohan

Dr. Anjali Karol Mohan is a partner at Integrated Design (https://www.integrateddesign.org) where she leads urban planning projects as well as initiatives at the intersection of planning, participation, development and environment. Dr. Mohan is involved extensively in action research to evolve city-region, city and neighbourhood scale climate change responsive planning frameworks that focus on resilient and liveable cities. Her professional experience over the last three decades straddles development, institutional and policy frameworks, urban planning and management and information and communication technologies and development (ICTD).

Gayathri Muraleedharan

Gayathri Muraleedharan is an independent urban and regional planner working at the intersections of urbanisation, governance, informality, and climate change in the global South. Through her work she contributes to sustainable and inclusive urban development through action-oriented research, planning, and policy solutions.