Institutionalising mechanisms for building urban climate resilience: Experiences from India

Abstract

This paper examines how mainstreaming of urban climate change resilience - a crucial consideration in an increasingly urbanised world - is occurring at both the city and national scale, using the case of an internationally-funded resilience-building initiative in India. Surat city's newly-established Climate Change Trust illustrates the importance of an institutionalised mechanism for coordinating and sustaining climate initiatives. Concurrently, climate resilience is being mainstreamed into the national urban development agenda, through a network of Indian institutions. These two nascent mechanisms offer avenues for local city-level experiences to inform national directives, driving and sustaining the urban climate adaptation agenda across India. © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.