Building Resilience to High-frequency, Low-level Flooding to Safeguard Public Health

The NGO identified water-logging as an issue that was not attracting sufficient political attention despite its impact on low-income communities and chose it as a foundation for building urban resilience. The fact that an organization was finally tackling an issue that was so important to people, but had long been ignored, led to community members actively engaging with the process that began with a discussion on several everyday issues such as the functioning of local water supply, drainage, and waste management systems. It then progressed onto a discussion of political and municipal accountability and culminated in the formation of citizens committees. These committees demanded accountability from decision makers for tackling the issue of water-logging and over a period of five years led to the investment of municipal funds in solving the problem sustainably. Throughout most of the process, the NGO actively avoided framing issues in the context of “climate change” but limited the discussion to small, achievable changes that delivered an outsized impact on the lives of the city’s most vulnerable citizens.