Recommendations

This section puts forth a series of recommendations towards strengthening the process of risk governance in Almora. As context is critical for urban studies, the recommendations are addressed towards the risk actors in Almora identified in this dissertation. These were the local municipality, households, building professionals, university and NGO. Since the process of decentralization has not been achieved in Almora and local government is still linked to state level urban development authority, recommendations are also made for the state level authorities. The operationalization of horizontal local level governance can be achieved from a wide range of legally binding arrangement to voluntary coordination (Tierney, 2012). This is borne in mind while making recommendations.

Recommendation for state level urban development authorities:

Although this dissertation primarily engaged with local level horizontal governance of risk in Almora, it does identify challenges within the vertical urban development government structure of Uttarakhand. In this regard the following recommendations are addressed to The Uttarakhand Housing and Urban Development Authority (UHUDA) which is the apex body at state level to steer urban development. The recommendations also extend to the Department

of Town and Country Planning, Uttarakhand as it is the nodal body to prepare guidelines for regulated urban development.

i) Acknowledging the need for decentralization of urban local governments: The State of Uttarakhand is exhibiting an upward trend in urbanization. However, the capacity of the state level authority is limited in addressing this growth. This is evident in the fact that out of 115 urban centres, only 8 have updated masterplans. Decentralization of urban planning functions to local level authorities is envisioned to address this gap. The current status of ‘decentralization in progress’ make it difficult for local level bodies to autonomously work towards addressing rapid urban growth. This dissertation makes a recommendation for decentralization of municipal functions to the urban local body. Decentralization will work towards distributing the roles and responsibilities which are now concentrated at the state level and work towards activation of local level planning.

ii) Augmenting capacity of urban local bodies: Despite the call for decentralization, the state’s role as an agency to increase local level capacity for urban planning must be underlined. The case of Almora demonstrates that local level financial and technical capacity for self-governance is low. Increasing local level capacity is recommended through the state level planning authority. Coupling capacity development with decentralization is necessary as one without the other would only hamper the urban development process. Capacity development programs for municipal employees are recommended. Providing assistance in review of the land use and building regulations prepared at local level through state level or external experts can be provided by the state. For this the state level bodies can utilized funds provided through various central government schemes like JNNURM and AMRUT.

iii) Formulation of land use regulation guidelines at state level: Similar to national level guidelines for urban development and land use planning, the state level authorities need to provide a template for local level authorities for drawing their master plans and land use plans. These must address the specific geographical conditions of the state, taking into account multiple disaster risks as well as an upward trend in urbanization. In the present scenario, where the state level authorities have limited capacity to draw master plans and land use plans for all urban centers, providing broad guidelines and templates is recommended.

iv) Maintaining a check and balance mechanism: While there is a call for autonomy and decentralization of functions of urban planning to local level bodies, there is a need for the state to maintain a check and balance mechanism, keeping in mind that the municipalities have limited capacity. As is illustrated with the case of

building regulations in Almora, despite relevant national and state level guidelines, the local level building regulations did not address risk. Decentralization does not mean the state completely pulling out of the local planning process, rather augmenting local level capacity when needed.

v) Enabling local level governance: This dissertation recommends a shift from strict vertical government structure to an inclusive horizontal governance structure. The local governance structure can have as its initial objective the strengthening of the local municipalities. State level planning bodies are recommended to enable the strengthening of local level governance as it will ensure that local level planning capacities are strengthened. To do this they first need to enact upon recommendation (i) of completing the transfer of local planning functions to the local level. Then through (ii) of strengthening local capacities through period training and finally through (iv) by maintain a check and balance mechanism for the municipalities by periodically reviewing their plans and regulations.

Recommendations for Almora municipality

Municipality in Almora is entrusted with multiple civic responsibilities, of which regulating urban development is a part. It has the instruments of land use planning and building regulations to address risk in the urban development process. However, the Almora municipality exhibited limited inherent capacity to address these responsibilities. It is further restricted in its area of work as the State of Uttarakhand has still not completed the process of devolution of powers to local level authorities in the state. Under these circumstances, the following recommendations are made in direction of consolidating municipal capacity for risk reduction, relying on the concept of governance. Here local level actors outside the government framework are identified.

i) Engaging with local university to enhance mapping capacities: As a town with rapidly growing urban population, Almora municipality functions without an official land use map. The local university has made attempts to enhance its capacity for governance through providing a GIS based mapping initiative. This act of governance has, however, met with challenges like lack of reciprocity from the municipality. Its current limited staff capacity and financial constraints to appoint new staff serves as a barrier in this direction. Here, the municipality is recommended to motivate and incentivise its existing staff about the gain of new skills and the potential ease of work through digital maps. It may also club with other departments within the municipality like house-tax collection for moving towards e- governance. Here a common map can serve both the departments within the

municipality. A locally made and technically sound map can serve as the first product of successful governance initiative.

ii) Consolidating building professionals: This dissertation illustrated that a large segment of building professionals in Almora are informal and at a blind spot of the municipality. However, they are instrumental in driving household level decisions for urban development. As a large demand for building professionals exists in Almora, this dissertation recommends against a regime of policing and control, rather advocates training and consolidation of building professionals. Here the concept of consolidation is borrowed from southern urban theory (Bhan, 2019). It stands for recognition and inclusion of informal practices to tackle the scale of urban development in the southern cities. Cues can be drawn from the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority that has made a headway in training and certifying masons for earthquake resistant design. They have trained around 1400 masons and constructed 52 demo units (Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority, 2018). Similar projects can be attempted at the local level in coordination with the District Disaster Management Authority, Almora. Furthermore, information about the certified building professionals must be provided to the households at the time of building application at the municipality. This two pronged approach will ensure skill upgradation of the informal building professionals and their employability by potential homeowners. At an initial stage the municipality should also consider providing house tax rebates for those who employ trained building professionals. iii) Engaging with proactive local NGO: Awareness and participation from

homeowners is critical to successfully achieve disaster risk governance. Here active engagement with the local environmental NGO to engage with citizens to create risk awareness is recommended. Furthermore, initiating projects with the NGO to develop locally relevant yet scientifically sound research knowledge is another possibility. Here, the municipality can encourage its elected ward members to proactively engage in such initiatives. The political benefit for ward members is the increased visibility to their potential electorate and possible project partnerships in their ward.

iv) Engaging ward members: Ward members represent the basic unit of elected representatives in the local government system. Though they are currently not responsible for land use planning or building regulations, their indirect engagement in creating ward level risk awareness, identifying land use and building malpractices as well as actively contributing in action plan preparation needs to be utilized. This corresponds to recommendation (iii) above.

Recommendations for local university

The local university is identified as a proactive component of the local risk governance network. They have already consolidated basic GIS information that can form the basis of risk reduction planning. At the time of interview, the local university asked for project based recommendations that can be attempted at masters’ level by their students. Based on the research findings of this dissertation the following recommendations are made:

i) Application based knowledge: Given that the university has already faced challenges in knowledge transfer to the municipality, the nature of risk knowledge produced is recommended to be application based. This could range from easy to understand land use maps delineating risk zones to pointing problem spots where flooding can occur. The attempt at the creation of such GIS based knowledge at ward level can be made as part of master’s thesis.

ii) Easy access to homeowners: The current GIS knowledge produced by the university has been provided to the municipality. However, to increase the accessibility of this risk knowledge to homeowners, it needs to be easy to access. Here displaying the information on the municipal walls is a step. Furthermore, easy to use mobile phone applications can be another solution. Here students are encouraged to use free and open source mapping platforms like ‘Missing Maps’ to create and share knowledge.

iii) Consult existing projects: Successful example of university and municipal engagement exist in multiple location in the global south that have attempted to address local level risks. One notable example is the risk map of Lima produced through the initiative of University College London and local level partners (https://climasinriesgo.net/).

iv) Start small: Given that the university intends to engage through master’s thesis projects, where time is a constraint, small scale but detailed and application based projects should be used as pilots. These could include using GIS to prepare a risk map in a prominent street to combining student teams to address ward level problems. Engagement with ward level representatives and local community is necessary to ensure the applicability of this knowledge. Here, ward members can be motivated to participate through possible electoral gains by engaging in projects that proactively address risk.

This dissertation identifies absence of land based information and low understanding of building safety as critical points of entry for such projects.

Recommendations for local environmental NGO

This dissertation acknowledges that the local environmental NGO does not have a dedicated program towards addressing urban risks. However, its initiative to providing a platform for discussions on unplanned urban development and its proactive support to researchers like me working on the topic of risk reduction, encourage me to put forth a set of recommendations through which the NGO can contribute towards addressing urban risks in Almora:

i) Risk communication: By the virtue of its engagement with the local community, the local level NGO can play a critical role in communicating risk awareness among all actors identifies in the governance networks, particularly households and municipality. Public meetings with multiple actors present is identified as one method of doing this. These include local municipal members, university subject experts, building professionals across scale and local residents.

ii) Increasing risk knowledge: This dissertation underscores the absence of locally relevant scientific risk knowledge among multiple actors participating in the risk governance in Almora. Conducting workshops with local level actors as well as experts is identifies as one method of bringing risk knowledge to the community.

Recommendations for homeowners in Almora

Homeowners in Almora play a critical role in addressing urban risks through their development choices. This dissertation established that homeowners rely on building professionals for making these developmental choices. Recommendations are made to homeowners towards restructuring their knowledge access as well as form local level organisations to bring forth their developmental concerns.

i) Breaking the cycle of risk culture: A large number of households in Almora did not appoint trained building professionals nor did they work with legally binding contracts. Although recommendations for training of building professionals has been made at municipality level, the large scale success would depend on households proactively asking for and adopting risk reduction measures in their homes. This would include creating a market for qualified and trained building professionals and well as move towards working with legally binding contracts. ii) Need for community level organisations: This research was unable to identify

community level organisations in Almora that worked towards risk reduction in particular and urban development in general. There were citizen groups working on a variety of issues from social concerns like women’s rights to environmental concerns like water source protection. Risk was still viewed as a private matter. However, as urban development increases, particularly without a regulatory

framework, risks will affect not just private property but the immediate neighbourhood as well. In this scenario, community level organisations can serve as collective forums to address the problem.

iii) Leapfrogging knowledge access: With the proliferation of mobile based internet among houses, it is easier than before to access knowledge on good building practices. Households are recommended towards increasing their risk knowledge not just through land use and building regulations but also through information present from reliable sources like national level research agencies and disaster risk reduction agencies. Recommendations are in turn made to local level university and NGO to provide platforms for risk awareness.

Recommendations for contextualizing urban risk governance in small towns in low and middle income countries where municipalities have limited financial and human resources is made in Section 8.2. Furthermore, methodological implications of introducing informal building professionals in the discussion of urban risk governance and the need to expand this to local level ward members is made in Section 8.1.

8.6. Conclusion

This dissertation began by introducing the phenomenon of rapid unplanned urban development unfolding in the Uttarakhand Himalayas and its implications for disaster risk. It concludes by acknowledging the pressing need to address this problem, given the urgencies put forth by an upward urbanization trend and the projected impacts of climate change. This dissertation focuses on the gaps in the existing government framework of land use and building regulation currently in place in the state of Uttarakhand to address urban risks. With growing urbanization and limited capacity at state level, mountain urban centres have inadequate access to land use plans and building regulations made at the state level. A shift of power and responsibilities to the local level bodies, as mandated in the Indian Constitution, is underscored in this dissertation. However, as a large number of municipalities in mountain areas are small, they have limited financial and human resources to address disaster risk. A case is made to move towards the concept of urban risk governance to ensure an ‘all-of-society’ engagement to address this capacity deficit. Here, a small but rapidly urbanizing town of Almora was taken as a case.

Contextualizing risk governance in the case of Almora reveals that the local level developmental process, formal and informal actors and local risk knowledge throw up challenges in achieving a working model for risk governance. The local developmental process is marked by transversal engagement among actors. Furthermore, there exist a gamut of informal actors, particularly building professionals that actively engage with risk production but

are at the blind spot of the formal government process. Furthermore, opening up the concept of risk governance means engaging with multiple conceptualizations of risk among actors and multiple sources of risk knowledge.

To contextualize risk governance in small urban centres like Almora, the first recommendation is to acknowledge that parallel process of urban development, other than the formally recognized process are in place. These processes leads us to the multiple actors engaged in dealing with risks. Second, it is revealed that not all actors work towards risk reduction. Certain actors, through their actions or inactions also create risk. In drawing its objectives, risk governance should work towards transforming risk production to risk reduction. Finally, there may exist gaps in the top down risk knowledge expressed in building regulations as well as local level risk knowledge expressed in practice. Strengthening local level risk knowledge is identifies as an entry point for realizing urban risk governance.

This dissertation found the concept of urban risk governance useful in strengthening the capacity of small sized municipalities in the Uttarakhand Himalayas with limited in-house capacities and well as ensuring a wider societal engagement to address the problem of risks. However, it acknowledges that there exist challenges in applying the concept pit forth by local developmental processes, informal actors and varied conceptualizations of risk reduction practices. Addressing these challenges is identified as a pre-condition for achieving governance.