Do climatic stresses and extremes pose greater risk to poor urban women? A study of slums in Delhi, India

Climate change is one the greatest developmental challenges confronting cities in countries such as India. Urban poor especially women face the major brunt of changing climatic conditions because of their high dependence on natural resources, and limited capacity to cope with climate variability thus negatively impacting their livelihoods. The present study aims to capture the differential in vulnerability and risk to climate change faced by the urban poor women living in slums across the five districts of National Capital Territory of Delhi, the capital city of India. This assessment has been done using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The quantitative assessment was done by developing a composite index Gender based Climate Risk Index (GCRI). The risk index is based on IPCC AR5 risk assessment framework in combination with Caroline Moser‘s Gender Analysis Framework to capture the gender related components of vulnerability and risk. The GCRI had 4 sub-indices namely Hazards, Exposure, Sensitivity and Lack of adaptive capacity. Each of these components have a number of indicators. The qualitative assessment has been done using several Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) tools. GCRI computed at the slum level in the city of Delhi has shown that despite facing same level of hazards, the slum population faced much higher level of risk to climatic changes due to their greater exposure, sensitivity (Poor health and Reproductive health) and lack of adaptive capacity (low literacy levels, ownership and access to resources and poor economic participation). The slum women in Delhi faced 14 percent points greater climate related risk as compared to the women residing in the city of Delhi. It is therefore important to incorporate the gender perspective in the slum upgradation plans as well as enhance the adaptive capacity of women of to enable as well as equip them to face such climatic challenges.