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Figure 18: Visual interpretation of collected sample’s locations from survey
The concept of resilience is currently causing concern and fascination among policymakers, academics, private agencies and other stakeholders in the face of climate change. Resilience is a popular buzzword in the field of urban planning right now, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on one’s perspective. The openness of resilience implies that while talking about resilience, stakeholders risk talking past each other (Herrera, H. 2017). Though the baseline of resilience remains relatively unchanged in principle, there is a significant discrepancy in perspectives among various stakeholders when it comes to on-the-ground implementation. The goal of this chapter is to undertake a perception study of various stakeholders across India in the context of climate resilience. The goal is to gain a better interpretation of the synergies and gaps between academics and practicing professional’s perspectives on climate change resilience. Survey questions have been designed and distributed to various stakeholders across India, both digitally and manually, in order to achieve the goal. It is been observed in various reseaerch all over the world that there is a gap in understading of scholars and practitioners of how climate resilience will act in bothe theory and practice. This chapter attempts to understand the same scenario in the context of Indian cities. The target of this objective is to map and capture perceptions of various stakeholders across India in order to get better idea of where India is actually lagging behind in the face of climate change. The stakeholders has been mapped in such a way that it would reach to major locations in India. The figure below shows the locations from where the samples have been gathered for further analysis.
4.2 Mapping and defining the stakeholders
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Figure 17 Visual interpretation of collected sample’s locations from survey
To examine how practitioners and academicians understand climate resilience, a online servey had been conducted with the help of extensive literature review done in the initial stage of the research. Various research papers and climate actions across the world have been studied in past few months to get a perception of climate resilience. The quiestionaire consists of total 12 questions. Based on the scholarly literature the entire set of questionnaire had been divided into 3 major parts- 1. Questions related to Perception of Climate change, vulnerability and resilience. 2. Questions related to Perception of actions related to climate resilience. 3. Questions related to Perception of achievements related to climate resilience. Open-ended questions with clear answers offer a wealth of information that aids in qualitative evaluation of any study. However, having closed ended questions is a smart alternative when it comes to rating resiliencecapacity of a city and comparing its progression across diverse social groups. Hence close ended questions have been created primarily to obtain more accurate replies and to facilitate analysis. Only one open-ended descriptive question was posed, and it was not mandatory for everyone to respond. Closedended questions were largely multiple choice, ranking, and likert scale questions in the form of a matrix. Along with each multiple choice question, there was an option to “specify others,” and interestingly, many reacted with their own perceptions that were not mentioned previously. A google form was used to distribute the survey to relevant parties. Perception study of local stakeholders in Surat have been performed during walk-in interviews as the part of objective 3 which was primarily to analyse the climate activities and initiatives by various sectors of the local government in Surat. A total of 60 responses were gathered from a wide range of stakeholders. The stakeholders have been broadly divided into two parts- one is local dicision makers which includes government employees from Surat, Ahmadabad, Rajkol, and Kolkata, as well as planners, architects, economists, textile marchants, people associated with NGO and other civil services and the second is academicians which includes students and professors from prestigious institutions across India. The goal was to gather half of the survey from local decision makers and the other half from academicians in order to understand the dichotomy and cohesiveness of their perceptions while incorporating climate action into spatial planning. The open ended question, “Where do you think the urban planning paradigm is mainly lagging when it comes to implementation of climate action related projects in India/ Surat?” had 15 responses out of a total of 60.The survey received a large number of responses from stakeholders, allowing researcher to examine their perspectives on climate resilience. Furthermore, this diversity of stakeholders brings a variety of perspectives and skills to the table, which can help governments make better decisions. The author decrypted the responses based on the divison of stakeholders already mentioned, and the inconsistencies were then examined and resolved.
4.4 Result based on Perception
Cities and climate change have a statistically significant association. On the one hand, cities are a major contributor to climate change via increasing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Cities, on the other hand, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which include heat waves, rising sea levels, excessive rains, draughts, and vector-borne diseases. Scholars and policymakers should be increasingly concerned with promoting urban resilience in the face of
