Description

About the Book

Urban local governance lies at the heart of contemporary climate action, sustainability, and development, yet it also embodies some of the most complex challenges of inequality, vulnerability, and systemic exclusion. This Urban Policy & Local Governance Youth Fellowship (UPLGYF) – Cohort 2.0 – Event Outcome Report underscores the critical role of feminist and grounded policy inquiry in navigating these complexities and advancing a gender-just transition in urban spaces. By foregrounding intersectional, participatory, and context-specific research, it highlights how analyzing power structures across gender, caste, class, and disability can deepen our understanding of environmental transformations and support more equitable, responsive, and transformative urban policy outcomes.

As cities across India and the Global South confront intensifying heatwaves, water insecurity, extreme flooding, and inadequate infrastructure, a gender-just transition emerges as both an ethical and structural imperative. Moving beyond narrow techno-economic solutions, this book emphasizes the importance of epistemic justice, community-centered knowledge, and dignity-oriented policymaking in shaping resilient urban futures. It demonstrates that women and marginalized groups are not mere victims of climate degradation, but key agents of change through grassroots collectives, Self-Help Groups, and participatory counter-mapping.

At its core, this volume emphasizes the need to equip emerging scholars, urban planners, practitioners, researchers, and local policymakers with the critical perspectives and analytical tools required to ask not just what policy to implement, but for whom, by whom, and with what consequences. By bridging theory with everyday lived realities, the book contributes to ongoing efforts to reimagine urban governance as a practice grounded in care, accessibility, and climate justice.