Funding

Global Resilience Partnership(GRP) convened by The Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and Sida

 

General Project Information

The Jaipur case study is part of the project „Women’s Action towards Climate Resilience for Urban Poor in South Asia” under the lead of the Indian NGO Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT).

The project aims at empowering women from slums in seven South Asian cities (Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Jaipur, Ranchi, Bhubaneshwar, Dhaka and Kathmandu) to take action against the most pressing climate-related risks: heat waves, flooding, water scarcity and water and vector borne diseases. The team includes experts in urban planning, social sciences, urban health systems, water sciences, insurance and communication. The FUB is responsible for hydrogeological investigations.

 

The Jaipur case study

Two slum communities without sufficient water supply both in quality and quantity were selected as pilot areas for hydrogeological studies. They represent typical geological settings in Jaipur and their water problems are representative for many slums throughout the country. Field research in summer 2015 revealed that a lack of knowledge and expertise in the communities leads to many water-related problems, such as wastage of water, illegal pipeline connections, practicing open defecation up-gradient of drinking water production wells and thinking in limited ways (temporal and spatial). A lack of capacity in terms of time, media access and confidence of the slum dwellers requires a solution, which is tailored to their needs and capabilities.

The goal is to develop a community-based water management, which takes into account the whole system including solid waste management and sewage infrastructure. Identifying how climate change specifically affects the water resources of a certain area will enable communities to either implement measures (e.g. recharge structures) to counteract the consequences or to demand concrete action from the municipality.

 

Documentary film project about the interdisciplinary hydrogeological project

Funding: Andrea von Braun Stiftung

Pani Check & Pani Doctors

The transdisciplinary cooperation between freelance filmmaker Katalin Ambrus and hydrogeologist Theresa Frommen from Freie Universität Berlin resulted in two films about a participatory and interdisciplinary hydrogeological project in India between 2016 and 2019.

The individual stages of the collaboration, from getting to know each other to the joint planning of the film premiere, made it possible to identify factors that were necessary for the successful cooperation:

Openness towards other ways of thinking and working, honest communication with each other, appreciation of all team members and their work as well as an objective and goaloriented approach. All in all, this cooperation was not only a personally and professionally enriching experience. The camera itself served as a research instrument and thus made new insights possible. Our conclusion: The more different the ways of thinking and working are, the broader a team is positioned in terms of its resources in order to solve a problem in a complementary and creative way.

Contact

Theresa Frommen, doctoral candidate theresa.frommen@fu-berlin.de

Prof. Dr. Michael Schneider m.schneider@fu-berlin.de