Hyderabad as a Megacity of Tomorrow: Sustainable Urban Food and Health Security and Environmental Resource Management

The focus of the project is the South Indian city of Hyderabad. The population of the city, growing at the rate of 27% per decade, was estimated at 5.5 million in 2001 and is expected to reach 10.5 million by 2015. Specific reasons why this case has been selected are: clear observability of the processes leading to the formation of a megacity; extreme dualism between the groups benefiting from economic growth and other groups struggling to fulfil their basic needs; the status of Hyderabad as a city of knowledge generation, to be used for problem solutions, and its location in a semi-arid agricultural region which is the reason for huge migration from the neighbouring rural areas. Four basic and closely interrelated problems of sustainability will be studied in depth: (1) environmental and resource degradation, (2) poverty and nutrition, (3) application of locally generated knowledge and (4) institutional innovation and improved governance structures. Research in these four areas is combined with process-oriented components of the project such as communication and co-operation strategies emphasising the gender dimension. Some of the major jointly co-ordinated methods of analysis are: Institutions of Sustainability Framework, Livelihood System Approach, Nutrition and Health Analysis, Watershed Management Concept, approaches of Knowledge Management, Co-operative Science, Gender Analysis and Urban Governance. Objectives of the project are to develop a Sustainable Development Framework (SDF) and a strategy to achieve consensus on a Perspective Action Plan for Hyderabad focussing on core issues of nutrition and health security as well as environmental and resource management.