Early urban climate resilience initiatives in India, largely supported by international networks, have primarily focused on strengthening state institutions and infrastructure systems. While these efforts aimed to build resilient cities, they often adopted a topdown, technocratic approach that excluded the primary victims of climate change— marginalised urban communities. As climate-induced extreme events intensify, it has become increasingly clear that infrastructural resilience alone is insufficient. Vulnerable populations such as informal workers, migrants, slum dwellers, homeless communities, fisherfolk, sanitation workers, gig workers, persons with disabilities, and socially marginalised groups bear a disproportionate burden of climate impacts despite contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions.

This project responds to that gap by adopting a climate justice framework that centres equity, participation, and community agency. It seeks to build the capacity of non-state actors in urban India to understand climate crises, their structural causes, and their socio-economic implications. Non-state actors include civil society organisations, people’s unions (domestic workers, informal workers, street vendors), women’s and youth groups, disabled people’s organisations, labour unions, resident welfare associations, environmental justice groups, academics, think tanks, architects, local media, and climate research institutions. By integrating scientific knowledge with lived community realities, the project aims to strengthen grassroots leadership and promote participatory urban climate governance.