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

This case study examines the role of gender-responsive approaches in building climate resilience within the peri-urban areas of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It highlights the vulnerability of agriculture-based livelihoods to climate hazards and argues that effective resilience requires addressing socioeconomic disparities, improving gender-disaggregated data collection, and sensitizing urban local bodies to gender issues.

• Agriculture-based livelihoods in the peri-urban areas of Gorakhpur city are highly vulnerable to climate hazards, with farmers experiencing longer summers, harsher winters, and less predictable rains.
• Climate resilience interventions must be tailored to the specific needs of different socioeconomic groups, with a particular focus on low-income communities and women, who require targeted attention and disaggregated tracking to monitor benefits.
• Several structural governance challenges hinder inclusive climate-compatible development in Indian cities, including a lack of gender sensitization in urban local bodies, poor coordination between state departments and civil society, and the governance of urban, peri-urban, and rural areas in silos.
• Women often serve as stewards of natural resources and their livelihoods depend heavily on environmental resources, yet this gendered reality is frequently ignored in policy-making and development practice.
• The Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group (GEAG) has utilized adapted participatory methods, such as Participatory Urban Appraisals and community-based institutions, to increase the influence of women's voices and interests in decision-making.
• There is a critical need to build the capacity of urban local bodies, city planners, and high-level policy-makers to implement gender-responsive resilience, including the integration of practical case studies into academic curricula at institutions like the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi.
• National urban policies, such as the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and the Smart Cities Mission, tend to treat the urban population as a homogeneous group, failing to account for differences in class, age, gender, and spatial location that affect vulnerability to natural hazards.

APA

Wajih, S., Mani, N., & Dupar, M. (2020). Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India. Climate and Development Knowledge Network. https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/CDKN-gender-smart-climate-smart-peri-urban-development-FINAL.pdf

Chicago

Wajih, Shiraz, Nivedita Mani, and Mairi Dupar. Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India. Climate and Development Knowledge Network, 2020. https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/CDKN-gender-smart-climate-smart-peri-urban-development-FINAL.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Wajih |first1=Shiraz |last2=Mani |first2=Nivedita |last3=Dupar |first3=Mairi |title=Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India |publisher=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |date=September 2020 |url=https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/CDKN-gender-smart-climate-smart-peri-urban-development-FINAL.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{wajih2020fostering, author = {Wajih, Shiraz and Mani, Nivedita and Dupar, Mairi}, title = {{Fostering peri-urban resilience: Gender-responsive approaches in northern India}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2020}, month = sep, url = {https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/CDKN-gender-smart-climate-smart-peri-urban-development-FINAL.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }