Category: Research

Dr. Daniel Rosado, IGCS Post-doc, Visits Chennai India

Posted on 18/10/202217/12/2024 by Rahul Rajkarnikar in Water Management

The IGCS team in Germany had the opportunity to visit IIT Madras in Chennai last month where they were engaged in research and exchange teaching programs. Dr. Daniel Rosado, IGCS post-doc in the area of Sustainable Water Management and from Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel shares the premise of his work in Chennai:

“Unplanned urbanization can have negative effects on the environment. At the IGCS we investigate how the lakes of Chennai, India, are affected by this uncontrolled urbanization and we look for ways to improve this situation.”

Do you want to conduct your research with IGCS and our focus areas? We offer research grants to students interested in the field of sustainability. Visit our Grants page for more information.

IGCS conducts a workshop on Agroecology: Exploring Food System Transformation in the Chennai Region

Posted on 06/09/202217/12/2024 by Rahul Rajkarnikar in Lan Use / Rural and Urban Development

As a result of our research in the Peri-Cene project and the Indo-German Dialogues on Green Urban Practices, we conducted a Workshop on “Agroecology: Exploring Food System Transformation in the Chennai Region” on Friday 26th August.

The event, funded by IGCS, was organized in collaboration with the Chennai Resilience Centre, Care Earth Trust, and the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre. More than 40 delegates gathered to exchange and share their views on periurban agriculture, urban gardening, and farming with the objective to identify options for how to create a network coalition for the metro-region of Chennai. Besides expert talks and interactive World Cafe sessions, we co-created a Nature Mandala and enjoyed folk music from Tamil Nadu related to farming.

Launch of the documentary on ‘Chennai – A Global South Metropolis in the Peri-Cene

Posted on 31/03/202217/12/2024 by Rahul Rajkarnikar in Lan Use / Rural and Urban Development

International conference: CHALLENGES TO DISASTER RISK REDUCTION AND RESILIENT HABITAT
At the CENTRE FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT STUDIES, April 5-6, 2022

As the human population increases, so does the pressure for urbanization…. Around the world, metropolitan regions are haphazardly “sprawling” past their effective borders and into the sub-optimal peri-urban areas. The planet has entered the ‘Peri-cene’ phase – a new global human-environment system shaped by peri-urbanization.

The Indian city of Chennai shows many challenges, with a combination of climate risk, socio-economic divisions and disruptions, and sub-optimal governance. Here the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS) at IIT Madras has focused on three critical areas – water, land use, and governance – in collaboration with the University of Manchester and KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm) on the global project Peri-cene.

Around the world peri-urban settlements suffer the impacts of climate-driven weather extremes – cyclones in South East Asia, wildfires in Australia, riverine flooding in China. On the positive side, there are many examples of peri-urban resilience, via novice solutions or “adaptive pathways”, with transformational agro-ecology, natural flood management or eco-tourism. With peri-urban land areas around the world now doubling every 24 years, there is an urgent need to steer the peri-urban towards resilience and sustainability. But this raises challenges both for science and for policy.

Link to join – https://zoom.us/my/synergistics

This film is based on research at https://www.igcs-chennai.org/
with partners in UK and Sweden, on the global project http://peri-cene.net,
invitation to join the Peri-urban Initiative – https://periurban.iitm.ac.in/
with thanks for hosting at the CDMS conference – https://cdmssbsc.org/internationalconference.php

Program:

PERI-CENE: FILM SCREENING & ROUND TABLE: April 5th

4.30-6.00 IST
‘Urbanization, Disaster Risk Reduction & Adaptive Pathways: Chennai in global context’

4.35: Introduction & global context: disaster management in the ‘peri-eco-urban Anthropocene (chair: Joe Ravetz, University of Manchester)

4.40: Introduction to the film & the Peri-urban Initiative (Christoph Woiwode, IGCS, IITM)

4.45: Screening: Chennai – a global south metropolis in the global peri-cene

5.20: panel responses: Dr Loraine Kennedy, French Institute Pondicherry: Prof. Ismu Rini Dwi Ari, University of Brawijaya: Dr Lakshmi Ragajendran, University College London:

5.35: open discussion – challenges & ways forward

5.55: wrapping up & next steps: (Prof. Chella Rajan, IGCS, IITM Chennai).
The film is also available on “Chennai – A Global South Metropolis in the Peri-Cene”
Any queries & comments: joe.ravetz@manchester.ac.uk

Cover Photo Credits: Chait Goli: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bird-s-eye-view-of-city-during-dawn-2093323/