Water Security in Peri-Urban South Asia is a three year project that works across four locations in South Asia. This action research project is primarily concerned in addressing the interests of the poor, marginalised and other vulnerable communities. It will build their capacities to cope with climate change induced water in-security.
As urbanisation brings about sweeping changes across peri-urban landscapes in South Asia, there are alarming impacts on land and water use. This is further accentuated by climate change that is expected to alter water availability for the future. As more agricultural lands are acquired from peripheral areas to cater to the increasing demand for housing in large cities, the lives and livelihoods of the poor, marginalised and other vulnerable communities undergo grave stress. These diverse impacts of urbanisation, and its implications for peri-urban water uses and the conflicts envisaged therein for the different users, needs in depth understanding and analysis and in turn should translate into effective policy actions.
The project hopes to bring the researched issues to the fore, thereby creating a dialogue-based platform where policy-makers and other stakeholders in the project could be involved in order to provide feasible and practical interventions through capacity building at the local level. The dialogues with stakeholders to discuss and deliberate upon the nuances of uneven development common in this region, will also serve as a medium for change at the policy levels. The project will also throw light on how people respond/adapt to these changes in their immediate environment, through sustained research and studies.