Adaptive Strategies for Responding to Drought and Flood in South Asia  

(Click on the title above to go to the Adaptive Strategies project website)

Floods and drought are fundamental challenges throughout South Asia, and their impact is heavily influenced by larger water management issues. Current responses to both floods and drought are dominated by humanitarian relief, without concurrent development of long-term adaptive mechanisms with functioning institutional support.

In the current era of globalization and, of interest to us, of global climate change, global and regional searches for effective climate change response strategies are taking place.

Effective small-scale, innovative local coping strategies that are influenced by a range of economic, demographic and social factors do exist, and these need to be given attention, but up-scaling these to a higher level is difficult. The lack of information flow in both directions is a key problem. Despite an expanding network in this field, few have solid field level strategies and few local groups have links to regional and global debates.

The Project

The Adaptive Strategies project, led by ISET, was an initial attempt to reconcile differences in perceptions of and responses to extreme weather events in the context of climatic and social change.

The project was designed to document and flesh out concepts and opportunities for more effective approaches to water management and flood and drought mitigation through an integrated set of studies in four field locations:

• Two drought affected areas in the arid regions of Rajasthan and Gujarat (India)

• Two flood affected areas along the Rohini and Bagmati River basins across the India-Nepal border

The program documented the following: 

• The nature of flood and drought related disasters and their links with longer-term water management issues;
• Existing coping strategies followed by communities in drought and flood affected areas;
• Larger patterns of social and economic change in case study areas that influence the vulnerability of livelihoods to drought and flood conditions and the opportunities these patterns may contain for reducing flood/drought vulnerability or mitigating long-term water management problems;
• Physical options for reducing flood and drought impacts or meeting long-term sustainability objectives that are adapted to the dynamics of hydrologic and social systems and that do not require forms of knowledge or organization that are unlikely to be available in current field contexts;
• Options for mitigating floods, droughts and longer-term water management concerns through indirect policy mechanisms including the retargeting of existing water management and flood and drought mitigation programs currently being implemented by the government, NGOs or other actors.

Key issues addressed during the research phase of the project were:

• The differential vulnerability to uncertainty, risk and surprise are the key factor underlying observed impacts from extreme weather events, such as migration, starvation, poverty, etc. 
• It is therefore important to identify the points of leverage for addressing the differential vulnerability within households, communities and social networks, and economic systems.
• It is necessary to develop conceptually sound but very tangible direct or indirect support strategies for actors such as NGOs, governments, aid organizations

Partners

Partners to the Adaptive Strategies project were:

• Dr. Sara Ahmed, gender and vulnerability specialist sarahmedin@yahoo.co.in  
• ISET-Nepal www.i-s-e-t.org/isetnepal
• Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT) www.viksat.org
• Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur www.idsj.org
• Indian Ocean Research Group www.iorgroup.org
• Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group www.indiaorganic.org/descriptions/updes.htm

Other organizations working on water issues in the region are:

• Nepal Water Conservation Foundation nwcf@wlink.com.np

• Winrock International India www.winrockindia.org

• South Asian Floods: Regional Cooperation for Flood Information Exchange in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region www.southasianfloods.org

• International Water Management Institute www.iwmi.org

• Hindu Kush-Himalayan Flow Regimes from International Experimental and Network Data www.hkh-friend.net

• South Asian Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies www.saciwaters.org

• Centre for Science and Environment: Rainwater Harvesting www.rainwaterharvesting.org