Sumit Vij
Biographic Data
| ID | 994728 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sumit Vij |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sumit |
| FAMILY NAME | Vij |
| SIGNATURE | VIJ S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wageningen University & Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5252-797X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 83 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How do blood and water flow together? Hydropower dams perpetuating fear and violence in northeast India
Given the state’s persistent fetish for infrastructure, several hydropower dams have had detrimental effects on the human-environment system in northeast India. Yet such violence is consistently overlooked; the state aims only to shape the discourse of growth and national security. In this article, we present conceptual and empirical insights into infrastructural violence , drawing on hydropower projects at different stages of construction in the…
What are we missing? A systematic mapping of climate change projections in the Brahmaputra River Basin
The Brahmaputra River Basin (BRB) is an ecologically sensitive region, facing threats from anthropogenic interventions and climate change. Geopolitical tensions among the riparian nations have impeded collaboration, resulting in a gap in basin-wide research. Despite limited scientific understanding, especially regarding climate-related impacts, several water infrastructure projects, are planned on BRB. To bridge this gap, we explored the current …
Is there water sector transformation evident in policies? Experiences from Asia and Africa
With climate change and political uncertainties, policies worldwide have undergone several reforms, promising transformation for improving water access and usage. However, unsustainable and unequal outcomes persist in several countries. The article investigates the gap between the rhetoric and reality of transformation within the existing water-related policies in two South Asian and two East African countries. We unravel the key elements of tran…
(De)constructing meanings and pathways of water and peace
Water as an entry point for peace is increasingly highlighted in global policy discourse; however, the scientific evidence supporting this connection has not been systematically established or explored, in contrast to the extensive literature on water and conflict. This systematic review examines the literature on the relationship between water and peace from 2015 to 2022, utilizing the ROSES methodology for systematic reviews. Our findings indic…
Hydropower Development in the Brahmaputra River Basin: Navigating Climate Risks
Brahmaputra River Basin, comprising of China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh holds immense hydropower potential but faces geopolitical and environmental challenges. The approval of Medog “super-dam” by China at Tsangpo river has reignited concerns over transboundary water issues, especially between China and India. Several hydropower projects are also being planned and developed at Arunachal Pradesh, India and Bhutan. While the dam-builders assert …
Beyond the (non)piped drinking water regimes: Complex Configurations of Conflicts and Cooperation
Historically, water utilities have favored the modern ideal of piped infrastructure despite shortcomings in ensuring water access to the urban poor. Consequently, various state and non-state actors play influential roles in shaping water access to the poor through piped and non-piped socio-technical regimes of water provision. However, the existence of piped and non-piped water regimes and how they interact is often not seen as the work of munici…
How inclusive is disaster risk reduction? Perceptions and predicaments of persons with disabilities during disaster in Assam, India
Persons with disabilities (PWDs) are disproportionately affected by disasters. Disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction (DIDRR) focuses on decreasing the vulnerability of PWDs and enhancing their capacities in disaster, yet little is known about how disability is mainstreamed in disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies and practices. Applying Amartya Sen's capability approach, this study investigates if and how PWDs are included in DRR policyma…
Urban water insecurity and its gendered impacts: On the gaps in climate change adaptation and Sustainable Development Goals
It is commonly accepted that water insecurity, accelerated by climate change, is experienced by women in gender specific ways. Using a rapid review methodology this paper evaluates existing literature (2014–2021) on climate change adaptation in relation to water (SDG6) and gender (SDG5) in urban and peri-urban contexts. By analyzing water, gender, and adaptation literature a thematic mapping of SDG5 was done on the resulting 34 documents. Despite…
Infrastructure Imaginaries, Past, Present, and Future: Living with the Urban Flood in Guwahati, India
Understandings of what urban flood infrastructure is and how it ought to operate have changed over time and differed within cities. This article considers changing narratives and practices of flood mitigation in Guwahati, India, showing the limits of modern infrastructure. Instead, we find heterogeneous technologies, actors, and relations working to guide unpredictable waters through the "proper" drains through patching, adjusting, and shifting m…
Status quo in transboundary waters: Unpacking non-decision making and non-action
Transboundary water decision-making takes place in a power-loaded environment. Apart from conflicts or cooperation-based outcomes, partial or complete status quo is also possible outcome in transboundary water interactions. Literature in the last two decades has primarily focused on conflicts and/or cooperation only, with a limited understanding of the status quo and its various forms. Drawing from the work of Bacharach and Baratz and other power…
Collective deliberation or just the state (in)action: How do we change the hydrodiplomacy landscape in South Asia
Hydrodiplomacy in South Asia is in a nascent stage, primarily focusing on data exchange and limited state-to-state interactions, leaving aside an array of organic approaches to understand the facets of water diplomacy and governance. This perspective piece is based on a series of webinars to identify ways to bridge these gaps in hydrodiplomacy in South Asia, highlighting the merit of multi-track diplomacy for embracing the plurality of interests …
Polycentric disaster governance in a federalising Nepal: Interplay between people, bureaucracy and political leadership
In evolving democracies, top-down approaches to response and recovery in disaster governance remain predominant. Taking the case of Nepal, this research explains how Nepal’s disaster governance has been accentuating different degrees of monocentric and polycentric configurations post-2015. Polycentricity is defined as a governance configuration where a combination of small, medium, and large-scale autonomous units coexists that are interdependent…
Climate-smart irrigation and responsible innovation in South Asia: A systematic mapping
This review systematically traces the context and evolution of climate-smart irrigation (CSI) in four South Asian countries-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. CSI technologies and practices strive to address two main objectives: (1) sustainably enhance agricultural/water productivity and rural farm incomes to build community and farm-level resilience to climate change and (2) enable adaptation/mitigation to climate change across different sc…
Demystifying piped water supply: Formality and informality in (peri)urban water provisioning
Water utilities have favoured the modern ideal of piped networks and infrastructure that is reproduced in policies and discourses about achieving ambitious water targets. In this article, using ethnographic insights from an urbanising village of New Delhi called Rawta, we build on work that challenges the myth of formal water as ‘piped’ water and informal water as ‘non-piped’ and explore both piped and non-piped water as dynamic and socially nego…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Water Security, Conflict and Cooperation in Peri-Urban South Asia: Flows across Boundaries
The book describes how peri-urban changes in water security are experienced and variously acted upon in specific water use contexts.
Synergies and trade-offs between climate change adaptation options and gender equality: A review of the global literature
Climate change impacts are being felt across sectors in all regions of the world, and adaptation projects are being implemented to reduce climate risks and existing vulnerabilities. Climate adaptation actions also have significant synergies and tradeoffs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 5 on gender equality. Questions are increasingly being raised about the gendered and climate justice implications of different adaptat…
Powering and puzzling: Climate change adaptation policies in Bangladesh and India
South Asia is a region uniquely vulnerable to climate-related impacts. Climate change adaptation in India and Bangladesh evolves using powering and puzzling approaches by policy actors. We seek to answer the question: how do powering and puzzling approaches influence the climate change adaptation policy design and implementation processes in Bangladesh and India? We adopted two strategies to collect and analyze data: semi-structured interviews an…
Climate Change Adaptation in European Mountain Systems: A Systematic Mapping of Academic Research
European mountain regions have already been impacted by climate change, and this is projected to increase in the future. These mountain regions experience rapid changes, which influence social-ecological systems in the lower-mountain and floodplain regions of Europe. There is scattered evidence across different strands of academic literature on the ways in which the impacts of changing climate in mountain regions are addressed and adaptive capaci…
Power-sensitive design principles’ for climate change adaptation policy-making in South Asia
Despite the proliferation of power approaches to study climate change, there is little focus on how to deal with the negative effects of power in climate change adaptation (CCA) policy-making. CCA literature provides little insight into understandings of manifestations of power that can create negative effects, especially in the context of South Asia. This review answers the question: How can CCA policy actors deal with the negative effects of po…
Prioritizing climate‐smart agriculture: An organizational and temporal review
Extant systematic literature reviews on the topic of climate smart agriculture (CSA) have mainly focused on two issues: reviewing framing of the CSA discourse in the academic and policy literature; and policy initiatives in the Global South that enhance the adoption of climate‐smart agricultural practices. Yet, there is little systematic investigation into how international organizations can help smallholder farmers manage agricultural systems to…
Evolving disaster governance paradigms in Nepal
This article aims to explain various disaster governance paradigms that have emerged and currently exists in Nepal. A disaster governance paradigm is a comprehensive set of prevailing and institutionalized ideas that shape disaster plans and policies that eventually are implemented on-the-ground. Nepal has prepared various disaster plans and policies at the national, provincial and local level, but there are major gaps in disaster risk preparedne…
From pea soup to water factories: Wastewater paradigms in India and the Netherlands
Freshwater scarcity has increased in the cities of the global South due to rapid urban agglomeration and changing climate. Alternative water resources such as treated wastewater can play a significant role to reduce the water supply-demand gap. In the recent past, wastewater has been used solely for irrigation and other allied agriculture purposes, with limited focus on reuse for other purposes within the cities. Despite the progress in wastewate…
From the core to the periphery: Conflicts and cooperation over land and water in periurban Gurgaon, India
Changing climate policy paradigms in Bangladesh and Nepal
The aim of this article is to explain and compare the changes in climate policy paradigms (CPPs) of Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate policies are shaped by the underlying CPPs that refer to a dominant set of prevailing and institutionalized ideas and strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change. We focus the analysis on the timeframe between 1997 and 2016, using policy documents (n = 46) and semi-structured interviews (n = 43) with key policy …
Land, water & power: The demise of common property resources in periurban Gurgaon, India
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
From the core to the periphery: Conflicts and cooperation over land and water in periurban Gurgaon, India
Where have all the commons gone
Climate adaptation approaches and key policy characteristics: Cases from South Asia
This paper analyses and assesses how existing policies and approaches in South Asia consider long-term climate change adaptation. Presently, it is unclear what approaches are used in the existing policies to cope with the future climatic changes. Our research framework consists of two components. First, we identify and define key characteristics of adaptation policy approaches based on a review of scientific journal articles. The key characterist…
Changing climate policy paradigms in Bangladesh and Nepal
The aim of this article is to explain and compare the changes in climate policy paradigms (CPPs) of Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate policies are shaped by the underlying CPPs that refer to a dominant set of prevailing and institutionalized ideas and strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change. We focus the analysis on the timeframe between 1997 and 2016, using policy documents (n = 46) and semi-structured interviews (n = 43) with key policy …
Demystifying piped water supply: Formality and informality in (peri)urban water provisioning
Water utilities have favoured the modern ideal of piped networks and infrastructure that is reproduced in policies and discourses about achieving ambitious water targets. In this article, using ethnographic insights from an urbanising village of New Delhi called Rawta, we build on work that challenges the myth of formal water as ‘piped’ water and informal water as ‘non-piped’ and explore both piped and non-piped water as dynamic and socially nego…
Power-sensitive design principles’ for climate change adaptation policy-making in South Asia
Despite the proliferation of power approaches to study climate change, there is little focus on how to deal with the negative effects of power in climate change adaptation (CCA) policy-making. CCA literature provides little insight into understandings of manifestations of power that can create negative effects, especially in the context of South Asia. This review answers the question: How can CCA policy actors deal with the negative effects of po…
Prioritizing climate‐smart agriculture: An organizational and temporal review
Extant systematic literature reviews on the topic of climate smart agriculture (CSA) have mainly focused on two issues: reviewing framing of the CSA discourse in the academic and policy literature; and policy initiatives in the Global South that enhance the adoption of climate‐smart agricultural practices. Yet, there is little systematic investigation into how international organizations can help smallholder farmers manage agricultural systems to…
From pea soup to water factories: Wastewater paradigms in India and the Netherlands
Freshwater scarcity has increased in the cities of the global South due to rapid urban agglomeration and changing climate. Alternative water resources such as treated wastewater can play a significant role to reduce the water supply-demand gap. In the recent past, wastewater has been used solely for irrigation and other allied agriculture purposes, with limited focus on reuse for other purposes within the cities. Despite the progress in wastewate…
Taking the road less taken: Reorienting the State for Periurban Water Security
This paper describes the intervention strategy to improve water security in Sultanpur, a village in periurban Gurgaon, India. Most approaches to improving natural resource management in periurban contexts focus on mobilising the community; little attention is paid to reorienting the state or strengthening the user-bureaucracy interface. This paper describes the action research process that was followed to reorient civic agencies engaged in the pr…
Where have all the commons gone
Land, water & power: The demise of common property resources in periurban Gurgaon, India
Changing climate policy paradigms in Bangladesh and Nepal
The aim of this article is to explain and compare the changes in climate policy paradigms (CPPs) of Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate policies are shaped by the underlying CPPs that refer to a dominant set of prevailing and institutionalized ideas and strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change. We focus the analysis on the timeframe between 1997 and 2016, using policy documents (n = 46) and semi-structured interviews (n = 43) with key policy …
Climate adaptation approaches and key policy characteristics: Cases from South Asia
This paper analyses and assesses how existing policies and approaches in South Asia consider long-term climate change adaptation. Presently, it is unclear what approaches are used in the existing policies to cope with the future climatic changes. Our research framework consists of two components. First, we identify and define key characteristics of adaptation policy approaches based on a review of scientific journal articles. The key characterist…
Taking the road less taken: Reorienting the State for Periurban Water Security
This paper describes the intervention strategy to improve water security in Sultanpur, a village in periurban Gurgaon, India. Most approaches to improving natural resource management in periurban contexts focus on mobilising the community; little attention is paid to reorienting the state or strengthening the user-bureaucracy interface. This paper describes the action research process that was followed to reorient civic agencies engaged in the pr…
From the core to the periphery: Conflicts and cooperation over land and water in periurban Gurgaon, India
Evolving disaster governance paradigms in Nepal
This article aims to explain various disaster governance paradigms that have emerged and currently exists in Nepal. A disaster governance paradigm is a comprehensive set of prevailing and institutionalized ideas that shape disaster plans and policies that eventually are implemented on-the-ground. Nepal has prepared various disaster plans and policies at the national, provincial and local level, but there are major gaps in disaster risk preparedne…
From pea soup to water factories: Wastewater paradigms in India and the Netherlands
Freshwater scarcity has increased in the cities of the global South due to rapid urban agglomeration and changing climate. Alternative water resources such as treated wastewater can play a significant role to reduce the water supply-demand gap. In the recent past, wastewater has been used solely for irrigation and other allied agriculture purposes, with limited focus on reuse for other purposes within the cities. Despite the progress in wastewate…
Powering and puzzling: Climate change adaptation policies in Bangladesh and India
South Asia is a region uniquely vulnerable to climate-related impacts. Climate change adaptation in India and Bangladesh evolves using powering and puzzling approaches by policy actors. We seek to answer the question: how do powering and puzzling approaches influence the climate change adaptation policy design and implementation processes in Bangladesh and India? We adopted two strategies to collect and analyze data: semi-structured interviews an…
Climate Change Adaptation in European Mountain Systems: A Systematic Mapping of Academic Research
European mountain regions have already been impacted by climate change, and this is projected to increase in the future. These mountain regions experience rapid changes, which influence social-ecological systems in the lower-mountain and floodplain regions of Europe. There is scattered evidence across different strands of academic literature on the ways in which the impacts of changing climate in mountain regions are addressed and adaptive capaci…
Power-sensitive design principles’ for climate change adaptation policy-making in South Asia
Despite the proliferation of power approaches to study climate change, there is little focus on how to deal with the negative effects of power in climate change adaptation (CCA) policy-making. CCA literature provides little insight into understandings of manifestations of power that can create negative effects, especially in the context of South Asia. This review answers the question: How can CCA policy actors deal with the negative effects of po…
Prioritizing climate‐smart agriculture: An organizational and temporal review
Extant systematic literature reviews on the topic of climate smart agriculture (CSA) have mainly focused on two issues: reviewing framing of the CSA discourse in the academic and policy literature; and policy initiatives in the Global South that enhance the adoption of climate‐smart agricultural practices. Yet, there is little systematic investigation into how international organizations can help smallholder farmers manage agricultural systems to…
Water Security, Conflict and Cooperation in Peri-Urban South Asia: Flows across Boundaries
The book describes how peri-urban changes in water security are experienced and variously acted upon in specific water use contexts.
Synergies and trade-offs between climate change adaptation options and gender equality: A review of the global literature
Climate change impacts are being felt across sectors in all regions of the world, and adaptation projects are being implemented to reduce climate risks and existing vulnerabilities. Climate adaptation actions also have significant synergies and tradeoffs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 5 on gender equality. Questions are increasingly being raised about the gendered and climate justice implications of different adaptat…
Collective deliberation or just the state (in)action: How do we change the hydrodiplomacy landscape in South Asia
Hydrodiplomacy in South Asia is in a nascent stage, primarily focusing on data exchange and limited state-to-state interactions, leaving aside an array of organic approaches to understand the facets of water diplomacy and governance. This perspective piece is based on a series of webinars to identify ways to bridge these gaps in hydrodiplomacy in South Asia, highlighting the merit of multi-track diplomacy for embracing the plurality of interests …
Polycentric disaster governance in a federalising Nepal: Interplay between people, bureaucracy and political leadership
In evolving democracies, top-down approaches to response and recovery in disaster governance remain predominant. Taking the case of Nepal, this research explains how Nepal’s disaster governance has been accentuating different degrees of monocentric and polycentric configurations post-2015. Polycentricity is defined as a governance configuration where a combination of small, medium, and large-scale autonomous units coexists that are interdependent…
Climate-smart irrigation and responsible innovation in South Asia: A systematic mapping
This review systematically traces the context and evolution of climate-smart irrigation (CSI) in four South Asian countries-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. CSI technologies and practices strive to address two main objectives: (1) sustainably enhance agricultural/water productivity and rural farm incomes to build community and farm-level resilience to climate change and (2) enable adaptation/mitigation to climate change across different sc…
Demystifying piped water supply: Formality and informality in (peri)urban water provisioning
Water utilities have favoured the modern ideal of piped networks and infrastructure that is reproduced in policies and discourses about achieving ambitious water targets. In this article, using ethnographic insights from an urbanising village of New Delhi called Rawta, we build on work that challenges the myth of formal water as ‘piped’ water and informal water as ‘non-piped’ and explore both piped and non-piped water as dynamic and socially nego…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Urban water insecurity and its gendered impacts: On the gaps in climate change adaptation and Sustainable Development Goals
It is commonly accepted that water insecurity, accelerated by climate change, is experienced by women in gender specific ways. Using a rapid review methodology this paper evaluates existing literature (2014–2021) on climate change adaptation in relation to water (SDG6) and gender (SDG5) in urban and peri-urban contexts. By analyzing water, gender, and adaptation literature a thematic mapping of SDG5 was done on the resulting 34 documents. Despite…
Infrastructure Imaginaries, Past, Present, and Future: Living with the Urban Flood in Guwahati, India
Understandings of what urban flood infrastructure is and how it ought to operate have changed over time and differed within cities. This article considers changing narratives and practices of flood mitigation in Guwahati, India, showing the limits of modern infrastructure. Instead, we find heterogeneous technologies, actors, and relations working to guide unpredictable waters through the "proper" drains through patching, adjusting, and shifting m…
Status quo in transboundary waters: Unpacking non-decision making and non-action
Transboundary water decision-making takes place in a power-loaded environment. Apart from conflicts or cooperation-based outcomes, partial or complete status quo is also possible outcome in transboundary water interactions. Literature in the last two decades has primarily focused on conflicts and/or cooperation only, with a limited understanding of the status quo and its various forms. Drawing from the work of Bacharach and Baratz and other power…
(De)constructing meanings and pathways of water and peace
Water as an entry point for peace is increasingly highlighted in global policy discourse; however, the scientific evidence supporting this connection has not been systematically established or explored, in contrast to the extensive literature on water and conflict. This systematic review examines the literature on the relationship between water and peace from 2015 to 2022, utilizing the ROSES methodology for systematic reviews. Our findings indic…
Hydropower Development in the Brahmaputra River Basin: Navigating Climate Risks
Brahmaputra River Basin, comprising of China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh holds immense hydropower potential but faces geopolitical and environmental challenges. The approval of Medog “super-dam” by China at Tsangpo river has reignited concerns over transboundary water issues, especially between China and India. Several hydropower projects are also being planned and developed at Arunachal Pradesh, India and Bhutan. While the dam-builders assert …
Beyond the (non)piped drinking water regimes: Complex Configurations of Conflicts and Cooperation
Historically, water utilities have favored the modern ideal of piped infrastructure despite shortcomings in ensuring water access to the urban poor. Consequently, various state and non-state actors play influential roles in shaping water access to the poor through piped and non-piped socio-technical regimes of water provision. However, the existence of piped and non-piped water regimes and how they interact is often not seen as the work of munici…
Political science (19 works) · Geography (18 works) · Economics (17 works) · Environmental planning (15 works) · Climate change (11 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (11 works) · Business (10 works) · Environmental resource management (10 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (8 works) · Sociology (8 works)