Water Security in Peri-urban South Asia: Adapting to Climate Change and Urbanization

Are our urban spaces growing thirsty by the day? What implications do unplanned urban expansion and climate change have on judicious accessibility to water resources among the multitudes who have made urban fringes their home in South Asia? A significant gap exists in current studies of adaptation and vulnerability to the vagaries of climate change that tend to focus on purely agrarian or urban contexts. Addressing this lack, this volume documents and analyses the experiences of this urban periphery in three developing nations, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, in terms of water security and access, adaptation to climate change, and urban expansion. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, and using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods from natural and social sciences, the essays explore the drivers of vulnerability in four peri-urban sites Hyderabad and Gurgaon in India, Khulna in Bangladesh, and Kathmandu in Nepal and examine the cost-effectiveness of technological and institutional alternatives to build adaptive capacity. The essays explore how different groups of people, men and women, face differential vulnerabilities to water insecurity induced by urbanization and climate change and how they adapt through technological or institutional innovation.