16 Jul CLAPS Project Kicks Off with Inception Meeting at IIHS, Bengaluru

Written by Nihal Ranjit and Aditi Apparaju
Edited by Sofia Juliet Rajan

We are excited to share that we had the first country-level consortium meeting for the Climate Change Local Adaptation Pathways (CLAPs) project from 22-23 February 2024 at the IIHS Bengaluru City Campus. Our partners from the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID) and Gram Vikas also joined us for the meeting.  

The meeting brought together 17 members across the partner organisations to discuss urbanisation and migration in the context of climate change—the core focus areas for CLAPs. Our discussions centred around themes such as planned relocation, immobile populations, and urban migration destinations across diverse socio-ecological contexts. We also spent time focusing on co-designing our research as well as impact pathways.

On Day 1, Chandni Singh, our project’s principal investigator kicked things off with an overview of the existing knowledge on climate change and migration. She highlighted that migration is often a common and effective strategy for poor rural populations to adapt to various risks, including climate change. Unfortunately, migration is frequently portrayed as a ‘failure to adapt,’ which shows a gap in understanding among practitioners and policymakers. This hinders the promotion of inclusive and equitable climate-resilient development. In the absence of formal/informal interventions, migration outcomes often exacerbate vulnerability and do not build adaptive capacity. Chandni pointed out that, through CLAPs, we aim to generate new insights into mobility and immobility in the context of our rapidly changing climate. This knowledge will help us co-create interventions and metrics that facilitate adaptation to climate change, while also examining existing local adaptation strategies in India.

Following this, Benoy Peter and Baishali Goswami from CMID and Liby Johnson from Gram Vikas presented their grassroot and policy-level work on migration. Liby talked about the nature and history of migration from different parts of Odisha, sharing findings from surveys in areas with high out-migration. Building on this, Benoy highlighted CMID’s work in the Ernakulam district of Kerala, focusing on interventions they have designed and are currently implementing, like the Bandhu Clinic (a mobile health clinic for migrant communities) and Bandhu Shramik Seva Kendras (a resource centre for migrant workers). 

The rest of the day saw presentations from our three work package anchors— Aysha Jennath, Sheetal Patil, and Nihal Ranjit. They outlined the research questions, research impact objectives and a tentative work plan, focussing on themes such as urban migrant destinations, immobility and planned relocation, respectively. The presentations sparked insightful discussions and helped us define the scope of our work packages and identify research sites. 

Day 2 was all about the research impact that we want our project to achieve. The day kicked off with team members sharing their understanding of research impact and their ‘moonshot’ ideas for the project. Prathijna Poonacha, who anchors our ‘Research for Impact’ workstream presented the theory of change envisioned for the project and the linked impact pathways. We then split into three groups based on our research sites—Kerala, Karnataka, and Odisha—to map various stakeholders across policy domains such as migration, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and urban planning and development. We also mapped interventions led by state and non-state actors that could directly or indirectly improve the well-being of migrant workers and contribute to climate-resilient development. These exercises and stakeholder engagements laid a strong foundation for identifying synergies across policy domains. Nitya Rao emphasised the importance of gender, equity and social inclusion (GESI) in our research design and adopting a GESI lens to understand interventions that lie at the intersection of migration and climate change. 

Overall, the inception meeting was an excellent opportunity for us to  come together and arrive at a collaborative, action-oriented approach. Our discussions highlighted that migration is not merely a consequence of climate impact but a result of various socio-economic, cultural, and environmental factors. By focusing on our three study regions—Kerala, Karnataka and Odisha—we underscored the importance of context-specific approaches and the integration of local knowledge into our research framework. The meeting also helped us realise the strength of the consortium, stressing the need to leverage our partnerships to generate new knowledge on mobility and immobility and translate this knowledge into tangible interventions that enhance resilience and well-being in vulnerable communities.

As we move forward, we hope to build on the momentum from this meeting, deepen our collaboration and refine our research design and impact pathways. By staying true to our commitment to co-producing knowledge and inclusivity, CLAPs is poised to make meaningful contributions to understanding and addressing the complex nexus of climate change and migration.