A Participatory Approach to Enhance Disaster Risk Governance: The Case of Delhi, India

Abstract

The climate-related disasters are increasing in urban areas, and every year, they affect millions of people through loss of life and massive damage to basic infrastructure, livelihoods, and personal assets. The risk in urban centers is growing faster not only due to urban growth in hazardous locations, lacking infrastructure, vulnerability of housing and infrastructure, increasing poverty, and inequality but also due to weak disaster risk governance, which also reflects how risk is valued against socioeconomic development concerns. Thus, disaster risk governance is utmost important and one of the main components of building disaster resilience of urban areas. This chapter deals with a participatory research on prioritizing community actions for climate-related disaster resilience in Delhi and showcases how the research attempted to enhance disaster risk governance in Delhi, India. The research describes how critical factors such as stakeholder involvement, cooperation and collaboration between stakeholders, partnership, and communication can effectively contribute to enhance disaster risk governance. In addition, the chapter also discusses the critical challenges of disaster risk governance in general and specific to Delhi. Finally, the way forward provides some suggestions to address the key challenges of disaster risk governance.