General

For the past two decades, across South Asia, planners, policy-makers - and property-speculators - have been energetically engaged in efforts to remake cities as 'world class.' Yet these years have seen the deepening of the urban pathologies that such efforts hoped to redress; as a 2016 World Bank report observes, over 130 million people in the region now live in informal urban settlements "characterized by poor construction, insecure tenure and underserviced plots." The poor are not simply left behind in the rush to make the world-class city; rather, our earlier research shows that the forced displacements, that attend world-class citymaking initiatives, often exacerbate problems in accessing urban resources and infrastructural services, particularly for the marginalised. We have also found that, in managing and mitigating the interruptions and upheavals caused by urban removals and dislocations, innovative forms of urban practice, political engagement and creative collaboration have emerged. These, often in partnership with CBOs and NGOs, can lead to pro-poor urban outcomes. Drawing on the strong collaborative foundations in earlier work on urban housing and infrastructures in Mumbai, Lahore and Colombo, we will focus on the efforts of the urban poor to access vital services (water, transport, communications), while attending to the ways in which these efforts intersect with the dynamics that shape patterns of access to urban land and housing. Our project will ask: under what conditions do the formal and informal communicative channels, personal connections, and 'phatic labour' (Elyachar 2005), by which everyday access to urban grids is enacted, encourage pro-poor outcomes? We will work closely with local academic partners in this first phase of the project, but we will also mobilize non-academic partners, including arts-based activists and community groups, planners and politicians, in a series of community engagement events in each city. The goal of each event will be to create workable ideas for improving access to services. To this we add strong South-South collaboration: we will hold regional workshops each year in Colombo, which has the advantage of being equally accessible to Pakistani and Indian colleagues, bringing together project partners and stakeholders from all three sites to share their best ideas.

Objectives

The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) supports cutting-edge research to address challenges faced by developing countries. The fund addresses the UN sustainable development goals. It aims to maximise the impact of research and innovation to improve lives and opportunity in the developing world.

General

The Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Program - Project II is the second intervention in a long term Bank Programme to build communities’ resilience to drought and Climate Change, improve their livelihood and promote regional integration in the Horn of Africa. The Project will be implemented in a period of 5 years and its total cost is UA 81.667 million, of which UA 74.982 million is paid by the Bank and the remaining being the respective governments’ counterpart contributions.

Objectives

Project II aims to scale up the Program interventions in Ethiopia and extend it to Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. The Project is expected to develop infrastructures for i) water mobilisation and management, and ii) livestock production, health and marketing. It will also build the capacity of the populations and Governments of the region to better cope with the effects of climate change, resources scarcity and conflicts related to resources utilisation. Ultimately, the project is expected to increase the income of agro-pastoralists through the improvement of the delivery of livestock related services (animal production and health, rangeland management, marketing, etc.) and the development of irrigation schemes leading to the improvement of livestock parameters (growth rate, carcass weight, milk production and offtake rate) and, the productivity/production of the main crops. The diversification of the sources of livelihood and the mobilization/conservation of water resources as envisioned by the project will reduce the vulnerability of the population to climate change shocks and exposure to inter/intracommunity conflicts that arise from competition over access to water sources for livestock.

Target Groups

An estimated 20 million agro-pastoralists affected by drought and land degradation will directly benefit from the project. Other direct beneficiaries include the Governments of the region whose capacities will be strengthened to enhance drought resilience development, natural resources management and shared benefits, and regional integration.

General

The initiative aims to contribute to the promotion of sustainable territorial development resilient to climate change in the urban area of Tataouine (South Tunisia). The two specific objectives ("Strengthening governance in the field of waste and wastewater management" and "Strengthening capacity to promote inclusive and sustainable forms of land management") have in common the idea of creating a strong territorial partnership between Sardinia and Tataouine, to facilitate the transfer of expertise in both technical and governance areas. The main target group are the local institutions (Municipalities, CRDA, ONAS, IRA, ODS, INP).