Resilient land use planning for flood vulnerabilities: a case study of kolkata city

Abstract

Settlements throughout the history started residing at places of resource abundance (rich) like water bodies, rivers. Even today almost 75 percent of the megacities with populations over ten million are located in coastal zones. The frequency and severity of natural hazards has increased in the past two decades and has begun to affect areas where the occurrence of disasters was once rare. Today’s urban systems are economy driven, where mobility/infrastructure plays a major role in the functioning of these systems. With the increase in urbanisation past and present levels of greenhouse gas emissions have locked unavoidable climate change effects into the climate system for decades to come, exposing billions of people at risk. During 2000 to 2015, India has witnessed at least 56 natural disaster events each year, and the major disaster events were floods with at least 25 events per year (EM-DAT, 2017). In India the city resources are managed through the City Level Plans under Master (Development) Plans. Land being one of the prime resources, and planning for it through Spatial Planning techniques like Land Use Plans, Zoning Regulations and other strategic plans are used. Many studies are done in the context of urban flooding vulnerability assessments for various cities throughout the world, but the implication of the findings and mitigating the vulnerabilities through proper spatial planning (Land Use) process is missing. Although several international frameworks, guidelines working towards disaster resilience has clearly indicated the need in urban India for an integrated resilient land use plans. Owing to the increasing risk of coastal cities and population exposure in India, Kolkata was chosen for the study and the current land use planning process was assessed in detail so as to analyse the wards where the sensitivity towards hazards in particular to floods is found missing in the existing land use planning . The current land use planning process follows the West Bengal Town and Country (Planning and Development) Act, 1979 and the process does not consider several environment and disaster management related aspects particularly, in the stages, for the preparation of the Land Use and Development Control Plan (hereinafter called as LUDCP) there is no consideration of hazard or any regulation measures towards them. Also, The East Kolkata Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Act, 2006 provides conservation and management of the East Kolkata wetlands. In few wards where the areas are under both the acts doesn’t consider how to manage the land as one act contradicts the other act where WBTCP Act focus on development of area and at the same time EKW Act focuses on no land use conversion policy. Overall the legislation and the governance of the Kolkata is having the huge impact and acting as the obstruction for creating such spaces where the occurrence of flooding is minimum. In other sense the system is not so resilient enough to manage itself when any disaster strikes in the city to the best possible level. Identified gaps in the Land Use Planning Process can be effectively minimised with the inclusion of several aspects such as effective land use suitability mechanism in place, effective decision support system should be with the inclusion of all the resilience aspects in it, and special ward area spatial plans where the degree of vulnerabilities are high. It is always viewed as the flood management needs several structural measure but the study shows that with the help of non-structural measures i.e. through Flood Resilient Land Use Plans (FRLUP), these urban floods in the cities can be managed way more efficiently. Increasing the city level resilience can be achieved only if the land use planning process inclusions are made. At ward level two cases are shown to understand where and how the land suitability mechanism should be in place giving the decision makers clear idea so as to where and what are at risk and how to restrict certain development with the regulatory land use tools. Through this study the strongest tool of the planner i.e. land use can be used in making future cities resilient towards urban floods.