Inside Story: Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India

The document examines the challenges of implementing climate-resilient development in the peri-urban areas of Uttar Pradesh, India, where rapid urbanisation and climate change are impacting small-scale farmers. It argues that current urban policies, such as the Smart Cities Mission, treat populations as homogeneous and fail to address the specific vulnerabilities of women and low-income groups. The text identifies structural governance failures, a lack of gender-disaggregated data, and the siloed management of urban and rural areas as key barriers. To foster resilience, it recommends targeted interventions for women, the strengthening of community institutions to overcome governance constraints, and the sensitisation of urban local bodies to gender issues.

• Rapid urbanisation in Uttar Pradesh is eroding kinship networks, which reduces the capacity of families and communities to manage shocks from extreme weather events.
• Major Indian urban policies, including the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), fail to account for differences in class, age, gender, and spatial location, which influence vulnerability to climate hazards.
• Several structural and governance barriers hinder inclusive climate-compatible development, including a lack of gender sensitisation in urban local bodies, poor coordination between state departments and civil society, and gender-blind selection processes for civil servants and representatives.
• Governance of urban, peri-urban, and rural areas is conducted in silos despite these areas existing on a continuum, and the gendered nature of ecosystem management and resource-dependent livelihoods is largely ignored in policy-making.
• Effective climate-resilient development requires interventions attuned to the specific needs of low-income communities and women, the use of gender-disaggregated tracking, and the support of community institutions to ensure women's equal participation in decision-making.

APA

Climate and Development Knowledge Network (2020). Inside Story: Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India. https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-fostering-peri-urban-resilience-gender-responsive-approaches-in-northern-india

Chicago

Climate and Development Knowledge Network. Inside Story: Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India. 2020. https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-fostering-peri-urban-resilience-gender-responsive-approaches-in-northern-india.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |title=Inside Story: Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India |date=22 September 2020 |url=https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-fostering-peri-urban-resilience-gender-responsive-approaches-in-northern-india |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climateanddevelopmentknowledgenetwork2020inside, author = {{Climate and Development Knowledge Network}}, title = {{Inside Story: Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2020}, month = sep, url = {https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-fostering-peri-urban-resilience-gender-responsive-approaches-in-northern-india}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }