Nature Can Solve Chennai Floods

Climate change is increasing the risk of occurrence of natural hazard events at different scales and magnitudes across the world. In India, Chennai rains and the resulting floods are a recent example. While climate change is the prime factor, environmental degradation exacerbates disaster risk, affecting the degree of exposure of societies to floods, landslides, and other hazards. Conventional urban-flood-management approaches alone may fall short as they do not provide the services required to build resilience to deal with the heightened threats. Therefore, there is a need to explore hybrid solutions that harness the potential of natural systems, along with the man-made or ‘grey’ infrastructure that is traditionally adopted.