Talking About Transitions feature critical conversations on systemic transitions at the interplay of technology, society and sustainability. Our Dialogue series provides a platform for thinking together about three major areas of change and challenge – urbanisation, climate change and digitalisation.
Our upcoming dialogue, Informality to Impact will be held on Friday, Feb 21st, 2025 from 5:00 to 6:00 pm IST.
Overview:
Few countries face the tremendous challenge of building urban resilience while urbanising like India: between 2020 and 2035, almost 200 million people are projected to move to urban areas1 and our cities are far from ready. Without adequate planning, especially for low-income groups, informal settlements will likely proliferate further. Today, 17% of India’s urban population lives in informal settlements, facing heightened exposure to risks such as flooding, heatwaves, and landslides, exacerbated by overcrowding and insufficient infrastructure and services.
However, eforts to build resilience to emerging risks largely overlook the vulnerability of residents of informal settlements, with these areas generally lying outside of the ambit of formal planning. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for innovative solutions that build resilience to climate risks.
In the recently launched report, From Informality to Impact: The Untapped Potential of Scaling Urban Resilience Innovation in Informal Settlement, Transitions Research and the Global Resilience Partnership assessed more than 130 resilience solutions being implemented in informal contexts across cities in the Global South. The ndings emphasise that while innovative solutions exist, their scalability depends on creating an enabling environment through advancements in policy, nance, measurement, and evidence-building. The report also highlights the need to move beyond reliance on municipal and public sector nancing – the active participation of non-prot organizations and private sector actors is essential to designing, funding, and implementing urban resilience solutions for informal settlements.
This dialogue aims to address the urgent need for building resilience in informal urban contexts, facilitating a dialogue between implementing agencies, researchers and funders to discuss: What ground-level insights about the design and implementation for resilience solutions can be leveraged as opportunities to scale resilience building informal settlements? What are the challenges in scaling resilience innovations in informal contexts? What are the enablers, whether in innovative financing or M&E, to nurture and sustain scalable solutions?
