SUSTAINABLE HYDERABAD PROJECT

POLICY SECTION | 9
we can very humbly say that we are absolutely
on the path towards realising the expected results
of the Megacity Programme.
Institutional analysis and change is the
overall framework of the project, based on the
premises that institutions shape the behaviour
of individuals and certain institutions can be
changed for the achievement of sustainable
behavioural patterns. The project focused on
developing a Sustainable Development Framework
for the Greater Hyderabad region, with
priority on mitigation and adaptation strategies
for climate change and energy efficiency
in various sectors, namely, transport, food
provision, urban and peri-urban land use and
provision of energy and water. One of the
main objectives of implementing the project’s
eight pilot projects has been to demonstrate
how combinations of institutional and technical
solutions developed through research can
be operationalised to help in promoting mitigation
and adaptation strategies with respect
to climate change under local conditions. A
closely interlinked objective of the project has
also been to ensure the sustainability of the pilot
initiative over time and the scaling up of its
results by local partners and stakeholders.
Although for analytic purposes developments
in the three main action arenas of national
level policy making, city level adaptation
of policies and community level implementation
of measures have been explored and their
links established, the pilot projects are only attempting
to change rules at the city and community
levels. Achieving institutional change at
a national level is restricted for two reasons.
First, for any local level institutional innovation
to graduate to that of a national level policy requires
a considerable amount of time and usually
has to pass through several stages (scales)
of adoption. This is practically impossible
within the timeframe of the project. Further,
climate policies found a favourable place in the
national agenda, leading to the drafting an action
plan – also recently at the state level and
several other missions for development of urban
areas, renewable energies and other clean
technologies. Therefore, the focus of our project
has been to analyse factors for integrating
such issues in the city’s development plans
through crafting new rules for sectors such as
transport and urban land use planning, food,
energy supply and efficiency and water supply
and use efficiency. These rules are intended
to induce behaviours which then contribute to
climate change adaptation or mitigation measures.
The following diagram shows our present
scientific activities, targeted at facilitating local
climate discourses. Discourses play an important
role in setting broader climate strategies
into a proper perspective, which then allows
for effective implementation of concerted actions.
Studies conducted within our project
have revealed that well-organised discourses
on climate change are more concentrated at
high-level decision making (national) levels,
while they are severely lacking at state or city
(local) levels. This leads to problems related to
implementation of comprehensive strategies,
largely due to lack of inter-departmental coordination.
To fill this gap, within the scope of
the project, various research and pilot activities
are presently aimed at changing or creating
rules enabling local adaptation and mitigation
measures by strengthening existing discourses
and/or with the inclusion of new discourses
generated as a result of project activities.
Climate Change
Adaption and
Mitigation: Pilot
Actions
Generate
Workshops,
Meetings, Reports
and Policy
Briefs with Key
Stakeholder
Embed in
Local Climate
Discourses
Climate Change
Discourses at Other
Levels
Produce
Institutional
Change
at Various
Levels
Other Discourses
(Poverty Reduction,
Health, etc.)
A Discursive Model of Institutional Change.
Source: own graphic
Moreover, decoupling climate discourses
from those of poverty reduction, public health
and sustainable economic development has
been found to be hindering adoption of climate
strategies. Our project is therefore making
an attempt to address this problem by implementing
well-researched adaptation and
mitigation measures together with required
changes in rules on a pilot basis. The knowledge
generated through research and actions
by the project, involving all stakeholders with
necessary resources, is embedded in the local
climate discourses. To capture this highly
process-oriented outcome, empirical research
on institutional discourses is planned, involving
all eight pilot projects, using descriptive as
well as interpretive analysis. In fact, all the activities
planned by us in the coming months,
such as the International Workshop, Capacity
Building, Policy Briefs and Policy Dialogues, are
part of this process of facilitating local climate
discourses. By complementing these newly
generated discourses with other prevalent dis-
News
The first publications from the
Emerging megacities Discussion
Papers have been printed and
are available.
Interested authors are invited to
read our call for papers at:
www.sustainable-hyderabad.
de/emerging-megacities.html