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Communication and Natural Disasters

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In her blog Learning from "Chennai floods": Development Paradigms and Disasters, Ranjani.K.Murthy contends the following: Living in Chennai at the time of 2015 floods (which in fact hit several coastal districts of the state Tamil Nadu), and hearing commentaries of how climate change and poor disaster reduction/management were responsible for the deaths and the crisis that followed, I was thinking there is something missing in the debate. The missing element was the direction of development followed in Tamil Nadu, and perhaps globally. Ranjani expands on this with reference to markets, real estate development, housing "rules", wet lands, marshy lands, water courses, and overall development strategies. How natural disasters are handled is a crucial communication and media issue. Can we please encourage you to review Ranjani's blog.  Please use the views and analysis she provides as the basis for sharing and expressing your perspective and and on communication, media, disasters and development in support of everyone's communication and media work in India. Thank you

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Thank you Ranjani for sharing your insights. Esther Maria Selvam and her team at Action Aid are mobilising those who are part of the forced relocation from the Adyar floodplains to areas that affect their livelihood (for your information)

I too think it is important to question how 'natural' or 'human-made' the flood debacle was.

I wonder if you followed Prof Janakrajan of MIDS and SACI Waters in his Hindu Lit for Life and other public lectures? He maintains that it is the systematic destruction of the watersheds in Chennai and neighbouring districts, that causes both floods and perennial water scarcity after. What a tragedy that failure to manage run off is what causes water scarcity later.

I was wondering, what are the citizens spaces and platforms (besides NGOs) that engage with the science-policy interface, city governance vis-à-vis an ecological approach, urban land-use transformation, real estate business as a key stakeholder to engage with, etc?

India has a Biodiversity Act of 2002 and a statutory body called the National Biodiversity Authority set up by this act, to help India meet her commintments to being signatory to the 1992 Rio Convention called the Convention for Biological Diversity (www.cbd.int). Cities and Biodiversity is one of the themes of the CBD, which may be of interest to readers here. I work on a project in NBA related to this theme, and am looking at the role of governance (which includes citizen action to make government accountable) and real estate in connection to biodiversity and ecosystem transformation in cities. Would be happy to have any useful leads related to these areas.