We provide support to governments and development partners on critical urban issues, particularly those of service delivery and urban infrastructure, urban climate resilience, governance and institutional support, and urban social protection.
Rishika has experience in urban resilience, climate policy, urban sanitation, behavior change communication, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. She has a MSc in Environment and International Development from the London School of Economics.
Vinaya Padmanabhan is a senior consultant with the climate practice, based in our US office. She has ten years of experience working on urban resilience, housing rights, health and sanitation. She has managed and led several complex projects on a range of technical issues, employing various qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Previously, …
Our projects
- We have worked with Community Systems Foundation (CSF) to develop a detailed indicators-based project, logical framework, and didactic online tool to help cities under the Smart Cities Mission in India foster a culture of outcome-oriented planning in India’s urban sector.
- In Assam, we supported the State Disaster Management Authority and local authorities in four cities to prepare climate-resilient flood management action plans. We also designed a framework for promoting and introducing innovative market mechanisms for climate risk insurance in Guwahati, Assam.
- In Lucknow and Visakhapatnam, with support from WSUP Advisory, we are conducting in-depth research into developing a behaviour communication change strategy for these cities to become open defecation free. We are also conducting a 'willingness to pay' assessment to understand what sanitation services the urban poor currently use, and their willingness to pay for improved sanitation services.
- We supported the World Bank to analyse methods of expanding voluntary coverage of the Atal Pension Yojana, and improving urban social protection in Delhi and Shimla. In Odisha, we are supporting the World Bank assess whether the Socio-Economic Caste Census data is complete, accurate, and can be used as an instrument for targeting beneficiaries for social protection schemes.
- We evaluated DFID’s urban development support over the last three decades in India with a view to identifying lessons to guide on-going and new projects investments.