Slum dwellers response to flooding events in the megacities of India |
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Authors: | Monalisa Chatterjee |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Geography, Rutgers University, 54 Joyce Kilmer Blvd., Piscataway, NJ 08854-8045, USA |
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Abstract: | Megacities in developing countries are rapidly transforming places. Under the impetus of global change processes and consequent
transformations at the environmental, social, cultural, political and economical scales; factors causing disasters and losses
are changing every day. These changes are also altering society’s ability to respond to hazard events. This paper examines
the response of slum dwellers who are the most vulnerable and marginal section of urban population and often located in places
with high hazard risk with less or no means to reduce the impact of flood events. Marginal population groups in megacities
suffer the negative consequences of large scale global change processes and do not benefit from the risk mitigation strategies
adopted by city authorities. The paper therefore argues that people living in informal settlements instead have to employ
a combination of structural means and complex networks of assistance to recover from floods. Based on the results deduced
from data collected with the help of household surveys in the slums of Mumbai, the study demonstrates the types of coping
strategies used by slum dwellers and the changing characteristics of these mechanisms under the influence of global change
processes in megacities. Furthermore, results show that capacity to respond is not equally distributed among slum dwellers
due to underlying socio cultural divisions and emerging economic and political constraints. The paper concludes that to address
existing discrepancies in urban societies and within slum settlements, flood mitigation strategies will have to be (1) more
inclusive of marginal population (2) sensitive to the limitations and scope of old and new social structures and (3) incorporate
innovative networks of support to deal with the consequences of global change. |
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