Connecting water science and policy in India: lessons from a systematic water governance assessment in the city of Ahmedabad

Abstract

Cities in the Global South are facing high climate vulnerabilities. Still, systematic insights in factors that stimulate or impede governance capacity are less widely available than those in the Global North. Moreover, translating relevant scientific insights into policy and practice is often problematic. Hence, there is a need for feasible interactive approaches that may facilitate integration between science and policy. In this paper, we assess to what extent the City Blueprint Approach may facilitate such meaningful science-policy interaction. This approach has been developed in the context of Watershare and the European Innovation Partnership on Water. We discuss the content of the approach and reflect on the process of applying it in the case of Ahmedabad, India. First, we carried out an overall assessment of Ahmedabad’s trends, pressures, and integrated water resources management. Important challenges of Ahmedabad are water pollution, water scarcity (decline of groundwater levels), heat risk and urbanisation. Second, a governance capacity assessment provided a clearer understanding of the main enabling and limiting conditions that determine the city’s ability to govern these challenges. It was found that the governance conditions regarding learning, stakeholder engagement and implementing capacity are most in need of improvement. Next, we zoomed in on a specific development in which these limiting governance conditions were better developed: Ahmedabad’s Heat Action Plan. Based on our results and experiences, we reflect on the generalisability of the findings on the City Blueprint Approach (CBA)’s usefulness for improving science-policy interactions and water governance to India as well as the Global South more generally.