Missing Link in Climate Action Plans – Communities

CHENNAI: Ahead of every northeast monsoon, the authorities in Chennai repeat a familiar ritual — drains are desilted, water bodies inspected, flood-prone areas identified, pumps deployed and officials put on alert. But one critical resource remains largely underused in the city’s climate preparedness: the knowledge of communities that experience flooding, heat and water stress first-hand.

As climate change makes extreme weather less predictable and urban vulnerabilities more complex, experts and environmental groups are stressing the need to move communities from the receiving end of climate action to the decision-making table.

The question facing Chennai is no longer simply whether it has enough stormwater drains or pumping capacity. It is whether the city is adequately using the knowledge of people who know, street by street, where its climate resilience breaks down.

A resident of a flood-prone neighbourhood may know which stretch of road becomes inaccessible after an hour of intense rain. A fisherman may know how a waterbody or canal has changed over decades. A street vendor or traffic policeman can identify heat-exposed locations that may not figure prominently in conventional vulnerability assessments.

Communities living around wetlands can provide observations about changes in water levels, encroachments and drainage patterns.

Community participation should not be reduced to residents attending a meeting or submitting complaints after a flood. The more meaningful question is whether communities can participate before a climate intervention is designed.

“Communities bear the direct effects of climate risks, whether it is extreme heat events or flood risks, and communities also have memory of climate changes. They must be consulted when developing climate action plans as partners,” said Dr. Shannon B. Olsson, founder and global director, The Echo Network. She pointed to participatory frameworks used in India and internationally, including citizen science and mechanisms designed to close the feedback loop between communities and authorities.

Before a flood-mitigation project is finalised, residents of vulnerable areas could help identify historical flood paths, blocked channels, low-lying pockets and locations where previous interventions have failed.

Researchers can then test these observations against rainfall records, topographical information, satellite imagery and hydrological models. Such an approach does not mean replacing scientific expertise with local opinion. Instead, it brings two forms of knowledge together.

Scientists can explain what the models predict. Communities can explain whether those predictions match what happens on the ground.

That feedback loop could be particularly valuable for a city such as Chennai, where relatively small variations in elevation and drainage connectivity can make a major difference during intense rainfall, he said.

The biggest challenge, however, may be communication between scientists and communities.

“Science and academia often use very specific terminology and definitions that are unknown to non-scientists. Like translating languages, communities and scientists should identify common terminology together so that information from lived experience can properly inform scientific data and vice versa,” said Kranthi Vysyaraju, Sage Fellow and Ph.D. student at the Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, and Vrije University, Amsterdam.

She suggested drawing lessons from Kerala, where local-level community volunteers have been trained in scientific methods for community-based surveillance.

A similar model could be explored in Chennai by identifying teachers, frontline workers, resident groups and other trusted local actors who can document climate-related observations and help feed them into decentralised planning. The northeast monsoon provides the city with an annual opportunity to build such a partnership.

Instead of treating each flood as an isolated disaster, residents could be involved in documenting when flooding began, how deep the water became, how long it remained, which roads were cut off, which drains overflowed and how quickly the area recovered.

If systematically collected and scientifically validated, such information could create a detailed neighbourhood-level record of climate vulnerability.

Every monsoon would then produce not just damage, but knowledge. That knowledge could subsequently influence drainage design, road planning, wetland protection, emergency response and land-use decisions, she said.

This becomes particularly important because Chennai’s climate vulnerability extends beyond flooding. The city faces simultaneous challenges from intense rainfall, urban heat, water scarcity, coastal risks and degradation of wetlands and waterbodies. However, these are not independent problems.

A lost wetland can mean reduced capacity to absorb excess rain. More concrete surfaces can increase runoff, while contributing to urban heat. Poor groundwater recharge can aggravate water shortage. Coastal development can increase exposure to sea-related hazards. Communities often experience these connections before they are captured in policy discussions.

According to environmental activists, a neighbourhood that loses its open spaces will experience greater heat. A locality whose waterbody has been filled may experience more flooding and the fishing community will observe changes in coastal conditions that are not immediately visible in conventional urban datasets. Climate change is, therefore, not experienced in departments. It is experienced as one interconnected problem by people.

The Pallikaranai marshland illustrates why community participation must accompany ecological and scientific interventions. The wetland is critical to Chennai’s hydrology, but its protection cannot depend entirely on government notifications and scientific assessments.

Communities living around such ecosystems can contribute to monitoring encroachments, changes in water flow, pollution, waste dumping and seasonal flooding. Similarly, residents around lakes and canals can become the city’s first layer of observation.

Technology can strengthen this process. Mobile-based reporting, community mapping, low-cost sensors and citizen-generated photographs can potentially create continuous local datasets, provided the information is verified and integrated with formal monitoring systems. The emphasis, however, has to be on participation rather than token consultation.

Kranthi Vysyaraju cautioned that participatory approaches must not become symbolic exercises, and said stakeholders who may find participation burdensome also need to be considered.

She also stressed the importance of intersectionality, noting that climate vulnerabilities can vary according to age, gender and profession.

“Inter-departmental coordination is critical. Agencies cannot continue to work independently when the entire watershed functions as one connected system,” said Dr. S. Janakarajan, former Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, and hydrologist.

Tamil Nadu already has considerable scientific institutions, local-government machinery and community networks. The challenge is to connect them systematically.

A community-science model need not mean handing technical decisions to residents. Nor does it mean accepting every community observation as scientific fact. It means creating a structured system in which local observations are documented, verified, analysed alongside scientific data and fed back into planning.

For Chennai, the northeast monsoon could become more than an annual test of whether drains work. It could become an annual exercise in learning, identifying where the city remains vulnerable, understanding why interventions succeed or fail, and allowing residents to contribute to the next round of planning.

The city’s resilience, ultimately, will not be measured only by the kilometres of drains built or the number of pumps deployed. It will also depend on whether Chennai can turn the millions of observations made by its residents every monsoon into usable knowledge.