Introduction:

The objective of this paper is to explore whether policies, plans, and practices which address climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and poverty alleviation and vulnerability reduction can be integrated by using a Human Development framework. A number of attempts to enable this have been initiated in the last few years via multiple UNDP Human Development Reports, the UN-ISDR Global Assessment of Risk (2009, 2011), the UNU-IHDP, and the UNEP Inclusive Wealth Report (2012). We however found a significant diversity of discourses across the international reports and the operational requirements of national development policies and programmes, which are fashioned in response to global development discourses. A consultation with experts and advisors from the development field, revealed a paucity of development practitioners in the country, who can integrate human development concerns with poverty and vulnerability reduction, disaster risk reduction, and climate change impacts. This paper attempts to integrate common concerns across disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation, keeping people and human vulnerability as the focus. Spanning various sectors and levels of governance in India, we lay out an integrated framework for urban resilience planning, to engage policy-makers and practitioners, towards sustainable policy and practice solutions.