The project sought to understand the implications for residents in four peri-urban locations of three south Asian countries in the overall context of climate change. This action-research project served as a basis for capacity-building at the local level to address these concerns and bring in stakeholders to discuss and deliberate the issues for policy change in favour of the vulnerable communities. A series of interactions proposed to bring forth the nuances of this uneven development process in South Asia. The project was coordinated by South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs) and executed in association with the consortium members and a team of researchers and experts from South Asia. In addition, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India was involved as knowledge partner for the execution of the project. This action-research project endeavoured to bring in peri-urban water resource dynamics in the wake of climate change at the forefront of research, action and policy agenda at the South Asia level.

This study was carried out over a three-year time frame in selected peri-urban locations in South Asia and was designed as a collaborative action research project involving partners from Bangladesh, India and Nepal. A mix of both qualitative and quantitative research techniques was used in the study depending upon specific issues being investigated. This included ethnographic research, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and Participatory Rural Assessment methodologies. The rationale behind a mix of methodologies was to enable the generation of rich data as also to facilitate triangulation, apart from enabling the participation of the members of the study team in the design and execution of the research. A study of the secondary data and other relevant documents related to urbanisation, peri-urban residents, climate change phenomena and trends in the availability of water was undertaken for each country and the proposed research sites compiled relevant information. This helped generate a clear understanding of the urban growth pattern and climate change impacts, which proved to be useful to the main action research and serve as a basis for further research.