Peri-urban transformations in emerging economies like India demand scientific attention given their impact on global environmental change processes. Some studies examine past or ongoing peri-urban adaptation processes, but insight into future adaptation needs and aspirations of peri-urban communities is lacking. Also, it is unknown how the high degree of informality that characterizes peri-urban areas, interacts with formal institutions to shape or enable more sustainable adaptation pathways. This study addresses these scientific gaps, using an existing typology of adaptation processes to investigate plausible future adaptation pathways in three peri-urban villages in India, near Pune, Hyderabad, and Kolkata cities. On-site field research followed by a Delphi-study were used to develop normative adaptation pathways for livelihood and household water use with local actors. The pathways represent development trajectories and adaptation strategies over the next 15 years in the livelihood and household water sectors. Pathways data was thereafter analyzed and compared in terms of drivers of vulnerability and opportunity, adaptation processes, and formal and informal institutions. Our ex-ante study identifies general and context specific drivers of vulnerability and opportunity shaping different peri-urban transformations. Results reveal similarities in future drivers, whose impact on peri-urban livelihoods and household water is context dependent. This comparative analysis contributes a deeper understanding of future adaptation needs by highlighting patterns in locally preferred adaptation processes for different drivers and water-use sectors. This normative understanding reveals preferences of local communities who are otherwise marginalized from decision-making arenas. A combination of adaptation processes will be needed to respond to the various drivers, only some of which are achievable through informal institutions. Formal government intervention will be essential for stimulating innovation, intensification, and revitalization forms of adaptation. Institutional adjustments will be key to shaping local agency and future adaptive capacity away from a business-as-usual trajectory.

Adaptation pathways is a planning approach used to design flexible, long-term strategies for dealing with future uncertainty. However, emphasis on how to discuss pathways elements with stakeholders during the pathways building process is under-represented in the existing pathways literature. This paper presents a participatory methodology for building normative adaptation pathways with local stakeholders. Iterative discussions are facilitated using a Delphi study that is designed to explicitly consider institutional, and multi-actor dimensions in the formulation of future adaptive strategies. This leads to adaptation pathways that are more inclusive of local needs. This paper describes the steps for iteratively designing adaptation pathways in a multi-actor setting through a Delphi study. A pilot application of this Delphi-based adaptation pathway approach is illustrated with local actors in peri-urban Kolkata (India) for future water management. It demonstrates how this methodology offers a structured way to introduce pathways thinking to local stakeholders and helps build consensus about future preferences and adaptation options. Moreover, it stimulates discussions about normative differences across and within stakeholder groups through the underlying values that define future pathways as well as the institutional adjustments needed to successfully activate adaptations strategies over time. Future work may be directed towards to strengthening discussions around uncertainty, connecting pathways to a broader set of future scenarios, and comparing this facilitation method against other existing ones.

In the published article, there was an error in the author list, and authors “Sharlene L. Gomes, Shreya Chakraborty, and Leon M. Hermans” were erroneously excluded. The corrected author list appears below. “Sarah Luft Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute for Geography, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany Sharlene L. Gomes Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, The Hague, Netherlands Shreya Chakraborty South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies, Hyderabad, India Leon M. Hermans Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands and Land andWaterManagement Department, IHE Delft Institute forWater Education, Delft, Netherlands.

The co-creation of knowledge through a process of mutual learning between scientists and societal actors is an important avenue to advance science and resolve complex problems in society. While the value and principles for such transdisciplinary water research have been well established, the power and empowerment dimensions continue to pose a challenge, even more so in international processes that bring together participants from the Global North and Global South. We build on earlier research to combine known phases, activities, and principles for transdisciplinary water research with a negotiated approach to stakeholder empowerment. Combining these elements, we unpack the power and empowerment dimension in transdisciplinary research for peri-urban groundwater management in the Ganges Delta. Our case experiences show that a negotiated approach offers a useful and needed complement to existing transdisciplinary guidelines. Based on the results, we identify responses to the power and empowerment challenges, which add to existing strategies for transdisciplinary research. A resulting overarching recommendation is to engage with power and politics more explicitly and to do so already from the inception of transdisciplinary activities as a key input for problem framing and research agenda setting.

India’s urbanisation results in the physical and societal transformation of the areas sur-rounding cities. These periurban interfaces are spaces of flows, shaped by an exchange of matter, people and ideas between urban and rural spaces—and currently they are zones in transition. Periur-banisation processes result inter alia in changing water demands and changing relations between water and society. In this paper the concept of the hydrosocial cycle is applied to interpret the transformation of the waterscapes of six periurban villages in the fringe areas of Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata. In doing so, three specific aspects will be investigated: (1) the institutions shaping the hydro-social cycle, (2) the interplay between water as a livelihood-base and the waterscape, (3) the interplay between the waterscape and water as a consumption good. This approach opens new views on periurban interfaces as emerging mosaic of unique waterscapes. The meaning of water, the rights to access water and the water related infrastructure are constantly renegotiated, as permanently new water demands emerge and new actors enter the scene. Especially this process-based understanding links the theoretical lens of the hydrosocial cycle with the object of investigation, the periurban space.

In this publication, we share our experiences with combining transdisciplinary research with the Negotiated Approached to address the challenges in groundwater management in peri-urban villages near Khulna, Bangladesh and near Kolkata, India. From 2014 – 2019, our team of researchers and civil society organizations has been executing the Shifting Grounds project. The project was developed as a transdisciplinary research project under the Urbanising Deltas of the World programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The Negotiated Approach, an approach for community empowerment, was used to combine research with capacity development within peri-urban communities. In this report, we capture our experiences as an interdisciplinary and international team, covering successes as well as challenges we faced in the process.

Water resources in the Ganges delta are undergoing drastic change as a result of urbanisation. Increasing demand for water due to urban expansion around cities like Kolkata (India) and Khulna (Bangladesh) is affecting groundwater access in nearby peri-urban communities. Peri-urban areas lie outside the formal purview of urban institutions, while their prevailing rural institutions are not equipped to deal with the changing urbanization context. To support problem solving efforts by peri-urban communities, this thesis offers the ‘Approach for Participatory Institutional Analysis’ or APIA. This participatory and structured approach explores problems using an institutional lens. It offers communities insight into the underlying institutions or rules in their most-pressing problems, the actors involved, and strategies to address them. This book outlines the need for such an approach , particularly in peri-urban areas and tells the story of how the APIA helped peri-urban communities examine their groundwater-based drinking water problems. Case-study applications in Bangladesh and India provide insights into APIA’s potential as a capacity building tool and ways to further improve its design and use with stakeholders in different contexts.

Peri-urban areas in the global south are experiencing over-exploitation and contamination of water resources as a result of rapid urbanisation. These problems relate to the ineffectiveness of the underlying institutions in this dynamic, multi-actor context. Institutions need to be considered during problem solving; however, peri-urban communities have limited insight into their institutional context. This research examines the extent to which problem solving capacity can be improved through gaming-simulation methods. A game-based approach is tested in a capacity building workshop with peri-urban communities in Khulna (Bangladesh). A role-playing game designed from game theory models is used to examine local drinking water problems through an institutional lens. Workshop evaluation shows that through role-play, participants learned about strategies in drinking water supply (in both the current and future scenarios) and about the potential to address water quality issues through cooperative groundwater monitoring. Results also show improved problem understanding with regards to institutions, actor strategies, and problem-solving constraints. Participants valued the interactive medium for comparing and evaluating strategies. This paper highlights limitations in game design and its implementation, and offers ways to address this in future applications.

Institutional work offers a promising lens for understanding institutional change, focusing on the efforts of actors in creating, maintaining or disrupting institutions. In this paper, we explore the capacity of a narrative approach to provide insights on institutional work, using a case study from the coast of Sweden. We identify four narratives that compete in the policy discourse regarding erosion and beach nourishment in the coastal province of Scania. The narratives reveal that actors hold different beliefs concerning the magnitude of the erosion problem, the division of responsibilities and the suitability of sand nourishment as a coastal protection measure. The narrative competition is considered reflective of past institutional discussions and ongoing institutional work in coastal management in Scania, confirming that narratives are used as sense-making and meaning-giving devices in institutional discussions.

The Ganges delta in Bangladesh is experiencing significant changes in its hydrological system as a result of urbanization. This is especially true in peri-urban areas near Khulna city where changing land use, economic activities, and population together impact the demand for groundwater. Existing institutions (or societal rules) are unable to effectively manage the needs in this changing context, marginalizing several peri-urban communities from accessing safe drinking water in the process. These communities are in search for solutions to improve drinking water services but have limited knowledge of the institutions that govern drinking water supply - thereby not considering the feasibility of possible improvements under the existing formal rules. Moreover, this knowledge gap on the institutional setting prevents them from actively considering institutional change as (part of) a potential solution to the problem. This study uses a transdisciplinary community-based approach to support strategic analysis of peri-urban drinking water problems from an institutional perspective. It includes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a game-based workshop with community members from a peri-urban village near Khulna city. This intervention draws from fields such as institutional economics, game theory, serious games, and evaluation sciences. The workshop comprises three separate rounds wherein participants experience through a role playing game, how institutions affect decision making outcomes. The first round is based on the existing drinking water situation, the second on alternate rules for improving infrastructure access, and the third on alternate rules for improving groundwater monitoring. Participants also reflect on the costs of effecting institutional change and ways to negotiate these with policy-makers. Ultimately, we wish to understand the effect that institutional knowledge brings to the problem solving process, the mechanisms to introduce such institutional knowledge into this process, and the role of transdisciplinary research in this regard.

Urbanization processes are characterized by rapid change. The peri-urban context represents such a transition zone during urbanization. Here, change create new realities and new demands, for which existing institutions may no longer suffice. Yet institutions do not change easily, as they typically exist to provide stability and predictability during social interactions. It poses a challenge for peri-urban actors looking for ways to manage their needs within this changing context. In peri-urban Khulna in Bangladesh, this refers to drinking water access. Our research examines how actors in two peri-urban communities in Khulna responded to changes in drinking water access via institutional mechanisms.We do so using the credibility thesis as the starting point, complemented with theories from the field of institutional economics. We expect that system change will lead to institutional change based on (1) actors' evaluations of institutional function and credibility, (2) a process of satisficing, whereby the costs, resources, and benefits of institutional change are considered in selecting an alternative that produces a satisfactory outcome, (3) whereby the nested structure of institutions strongly influences associated costs and resources available to actors to effect institutional change. The analysis is undertaken using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Case study findings offers insight into institutional function in peri-urban contexts. It demonstrates the difficulty of achieving institutional change and highlights the role of the informal context in peri-urban areas. Our paper shows the added value of understanding the institutional context during urban transitions and offers insight into the design of empirical studies on institutional change.

Community operational research (COR) helps local stakeholders address complex messy problems related to public goods. Many of these problems feature an institutional dimension, whereby institutions refer to rules that structure behaviour and interactions in society. If a sound analysis of this institutional dimension is limited in scope, or even completely absent, then the result is an incomplete problem understanding or a narrower solution space. In this paper, we outline a COR approach for participatory institutional analysis of local problems aimed at enhancing problem formulation and solution-finding efforts. The process has four main steps: problem identification, institutional system mapping, strategic analysis, and strategy exploration. This approach is applied to the issue of water supply in a marginalized, peri urban village near Khulna city, Bangladesh. Our paper discusses the results achieved thus far, and we argue that our analytical framework and methods prove to be promising for this peri urban application. However, their use with local stakeholders requires an intensive process of two-way capacity building between communities and analysts, developing a joint understanding of both local problems and key components/mechanisms in institutional development.

Urbanization creates challenges for water management in an evolving socio-economic context. This is particularly relevant in transitioning peri-urban areas like Khulna, Bangladesh where competing demands have put pressure on local groundwater resources. Users are unable to sufficiently meet their needs through existing institutions. These institutions provide the rules for service provision and act as guidelines for actors to resolve their water related issues. However, the evolving peri-urban context can produce fragmented institutional arrangements. For example in Khulna, water supply is based on urban and rural boundaries that has created water access issues for peri-urban communities. This has motivated local actors to manage their groundwater needs in various ways. General institutional theories are well developed in literature, yet little is known about institutions in transitioning peri-urban areas. Institutions that fail to adapt to changing dynamics run the risk of becoming obsolete or counter-productive, hence the need for investigating institutional change mechanisms in this context. This paper examines peri-urban case studies from Khulna using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to demonstrate how institutions have contributed to spatial differences in groundwater access with local actors investing in formal and informal institutional change as a means of accessing groundwater.

Transdisciplinary science transcends disciplinary boundaries. The reasons to engage in transdisciplinary science are many and include the desire to nurture a more direct relationship between science and society, as well as the desire to explain phenomena that cannot be explained by any of the existing disciplinary bodies of knowledge in isolation. Both reasons also reinforce each other, as reality often features a level of complexity that demands and inspires the combination of scientific knowledge from various disciplines. The challenge in transdisciplinary science, however, is not so much to cross disciplinary boundaries, but to ensure an effective connection between disciplines. This contribution reports on the strategy used in a transdisciplinary research project to address groundwater management in peri-urban areas in the Ganges delta. Groundwater management in peri-urban areas in rapidly urbanizing deltas is affected by diverse forces such as rapid population growth, increased economic activity and changing livelihood patterns, and other forces which result in a growing pressure on available groundwater resources. Understanding the intervention possibilities for a more sustainable groundwater management in these peri-urban areas requires an understanding of the dynamic interplay between various sub-systems, such as the physical groundwater system, the water using activities in households and livelihoods, and the institutional system of formal and informal rules that are used by various parties to access groundwater resources and to distribute the associated societal and economic costs and benefits. The ambition in the reported project is to contribute both new scientific knowledge, as well as build capacity with peri-urban stakeholders to improve the sustainability and equitability of local groundwater management. This is done by combining science and development activities, led by different organizations. The scientific component further consists of three sub-components. The connection between these scientific disciplines is made by using a multi-polar strategy. Each research works with a different framework rooted in its own scientific discipline, featuring its own concepts and theories: a hydrogeological framework, a sustainable livelihoods framework and an institutional development framework. Rather than forcing these frameworks into a new framework that is perhaps only fit for the purpose of this single research, the disciplinary frameworks are left in-tact, but are connected by a translation of key variables from one framework to the other. Often, what is an exogenous variable in one framework, is endogenous in another, and vice versa. Investigating the connections between these different poles would require an integrating perspective, for which again different scientific integration perspectives will be explored, rooted in different scientific traditions. The poster will present this framework and the initial findings and experiences with this transdisciplinary research strategy.