Case Study of Health and Climate Risks in Informal Settlements in Mumbai
Introduction
This case study, authored by Mamta Patwardhan in 2017, provides a harrowing deep dive into the intersection of climate change, public health, and urban poverty in one of the world’s most densely populated cities: Mumbai. Focusing on Aadarsh Nagar, a neighbourhood within the Deonar informal settlements, the report examines how environmental hazards exacerbated by poor planning create a relentless cycle of disease and despair for its residents. The core argument is that climate change is not a distant environmental concern but an immediate health emergency for the urban poor, and that traditional urban planning has failed to address this vulnerability.
Funded by the Erasmus+ Programme and published by the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute (KRVIA), this study moves beyond abstract data. It uses semi-structured interviews, visual surveys, and municipal health records to paint a vivid picture of life on the edge of the infamous Deonar dumping ground one of Mumbai’s largest and most toxic landfills.
Part 1: The Perfect Storm Urbanization, Climate, and Health
The report begins by framing the global context. Rapid urbanization has led to over half the world’s population living in cities, with a significant portion relegated to informal settlements. In Mumbai, this is stark: over 60% of the city’s 22 million residents live in slums. These are not accidental communities but the direct result of the state’s inability to provide affordable housing. Migrants, drawn by livelihood opportunities, are forced to occupy "marginalized spaces" coastal zones, floodplains, and, in this case, land adjacent to a dump yard.
The study highlights a critical, often overlooked link: climate change and health. The World Health Organization notes that climate change affects social and environmental determinants of health clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food, and secure shelter. For the residents of Deonar, this is not a future prediction but a daily reality. The urban heat island effect, extreme rainfall, and flooding turn pre-existing unhealthy conditions into life-threatening crises. The paper references the 2005 Mumbai floods (944 mm of rain in 24 hours) as a watershed moment, showing how blocked drains and poor drainage systems turned a natural weather event into a man-made disaster.
Projected climate change impacts for Mumbai are alarming: a projected 20-40% increase in precipitation and more frequent 50- to 100-year return period flood events. Adam Sobel’s research on cyclone risk is cited, warning that low-lying areas like Deonar are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges.
Part 2: The Case Study – Deonar’s Aadarsh Nagar
Location and History
The Deonar dumping ground is a 132-hectare landfill surrounded by Thane Creek and slum informal settlements like Aadarsh Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, and Baiganwadi. The area’s history is one of forced displacement. Starting in the 1970s, poor residents from inner-city Mumbai often Dalits and Muslims, were relocated here after droughts in rural Maharashtra. Later waves included families displaced by World Bank infrastructure projects and the relocation of the Bandra slaughterhouse. Thus, the settlement was born not of choice but of systemic neglect.
The residents are the invisible workforce of Mumbai: manual scavengers, sewage cleaners, street sweepers, and most critically, waste pickers. Their livelihood depends entirely on the dump yard, where they sort through mixed waste plastic, medical refuse, electronic goods, and industrial debris to earn a meagre 300-400 rupees per day.
Living Conditions: A Toxic Landscape
The report describes the physical environment in unflinching detail. Homes in Aadarsh Nagar are constructed of scrap: tin sheets, bamboo poles, and tarpaulin. A typical informal settlements dwelling is a single room (10x12 feet) with no windows, no ventilation, and an interior that becomes unbearably hot due to the urban heat island effect. The layout is a grid of narrow alleys just a metre wide that serve as both walkways and open drains (nallahs).
Basic services are virtually absent.
Water: Municipal water is available only for a few hours starting at 4 AM. It is often turbid and stored in open drums, which children use to cool off, leading to contamination. Illegal water connections cost Rs. 16,000 unaffordable for most.
Sanitation: The toilet-to-person ratio is a staggering 1:290. There is no formal sewage network. Septic tanks overflow, raw sewage spills into streets, and residents especially women, resort to open defecation. This leads to chronic skin allergies, genital infections, and menstrual health problems. The report notes one instance where a toilet floor collapsed, causing users to fall into the septic tank below.
Healthcare: Only one public health centre serves the area, seeing about 200 women daily for complaints of throat and eye irritations, respiratory ailments, and skin allergies. During extreme weather, cases of water-borne and vector-borne diseases spike dramatically.
Part 3: The Health and Climate Nexus Key Findings
The research on informal settlements answers three primary questions, revealing a catastrophic interplay between man-made hazards and natural forces.
1. How extreme weather exacerbates health risks
The study uses participatory mapping and health logs to show clear correlations:
During extreme rainfall and flooding: The narrow lanes waterlog immediately. Stagnant, contaminated water (mixed with raw sewage and dump runoff) floods homes. This leads to a 50% increase in water-borne diseases (cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea) and a 55% increase in vector-borne diseases (malaria, dengue) according to the study’s primary data. The physician interviewed confirmed that water-borne diseases rise three- to four-fold during the monsoon.
During extreme heat and fires: The Deonar dump yard is a ticking time bomb. Decomposing garbage generates methane, a highly combustible gas. Summer heat (aggravated by the UHI effect) frequently sparks fires. Inhabitants described being engulfed by thick, toxic smoke. PM10 and PM2.5 levels near the dump were recorded at 788 µg/m³ and 583 µg/m³ respectively nearly eight times the safety limit (100 µg/m³ and 60 µg/m³). This leads to a surge in respiratory diseases like COPD, asthma, bronchitis, and allergic rhinitis. Even months after a fire, residents suffer from throat irritation and breathlessness.
Winter: Paradoxically, winter sees the highest concentration of suspended pollutants because the air is thinner, aggravating chronic lung conditions.
Women and children are the most vulnerable. Women spend more time at home, exposed to toxic gases, and face specific sanitation-related health crises. Children show stunted growth and often miss school to help collect water.
2. Can slum upgrading and risk-based land use planning help?
The study is cautiously pessimistic but prescriptive. Current policies, like the Development Plan 2034, earmark slum areas for "education" or "municipal services," with no clear rehabilitation strategy. Existing approaches like informal settlements and Slum Rehabilitation Schemes (SRS) offer incentive FSI to builders to house slum dwellers in tower blocks, but these ignore site-specific risks (proximity to the dump, flood zones).
The author argues that risk-based land use planning is essential but must be radical:
Building materials: Current tin and plastic structures are fire accelerants. Planning must mandate non-combustible, ventilated materials.
Layout: The 1-metre-wide alleys are death traps during floods and fires. Any upgrading must include wider evacuation routes and stormwater drains.
Decentralized sanitation: Given the impossibility of conventional sewers in this geology, the report suggests ecological sanitation (composting toilets) and community-scale water treatment.
Livelihood integration: Relocation is tricky. Moving residents away from the dump destroys their income. The study advocates for "in-situ upgrading" that creates safe zones within the dump for waste segregation and provides protective gear (masks, gloves) to reduce exposure.
However, viability is low under current conditions due to insecure land tenure. Residents face bulldozing 2-3 times a year, so they will never invest in permanent structures. Without legal recognition, no planning intervention can take root.
3. How city growth impacts community vulnerability
The study concludes that the vulnerability of Deonar’s residents is not an accident; it is a direct function of Mumbai’s urban development. As the city grows, waste generation skyrockets, the dump expands, and more migrants arrive to pick that waste. The state’s neoliberal turn has turned a blind eye to this "invisible" workforce.
The report quotes Amita Bhide of TISS: "We continue to dump because we have no option... this issue is reaching crisis proportions." The same infrastructure projects that displaced people to Deonar (World Bank roads, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre security zones) also created the economic precarity that keeps them trapped. The institutional framework is broken: the municipal corporation denies water connections to "illegal" structures, even after a Bombay High Court ruling (Pani Haq Samiti, 2014) stated the state cannot deny water based on illegality.
Part 4: Bridging the Gap A Planning Framework
The final section critiques the gap between urban planning and public health. Jason Corburn’s work is cited, noting that environmental impact assessments focus on cancer risks but ignore chronic, cumulative exposures (like daily PM2.5 inhalation). The study calls for advocacy planning (Paul Davidoff) where planners work for the poor, not just the state.
The author proposes a new planning framework (Table 4 in the original) that integrates:
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) with climate change adaptation (CCA).
Health impact assessments as mandatory for any land-use decision.
Community participation not just token consultation, but co-design.
Resilience metrics for housing, including raised plinths (to combat flooding), fire-resistant materials, and cross-ventilation to reduce heat stress.
The study ends with a sobering conclusion: the residents of Aadarsh Nagar live a life described by Thomas Hobbes as "short, nasty, and brutish." They have normalized chronic respiratory illness, constant skin allergies, and the fear of drowning or burning alive. They exhibit adaptive capacity only at the most basic level covering water drums, raising plinths rarely but there is no formal disaster risk governance.
The author recommends that higher education curricula for urban designers must include climate-resilient design for informal settlements. The EU-funded BinUCom project (under which this study was conducted) aims to do just that: build inclusive urban communities by putting health and climate at the centre of planning.
Key Takeaways for Policymakers and Practitioners
Climate change is a health emergency for slum dwellers. Extreme heat worsens dump fires; extreme rainfall worsens water-borne diseases. Planning must treat these as interconnected.
Sanitation is the missing link. The 1:290 toilet ratio is a public health catastrophe. Any intervention must prioritize water-sealed toilets and sewage treatment tailored to high-density, low-income areas.
Insecure tenure blocks resilience. As long as residents fear eviction, they will not build safer homes. Legal recognition of slums is a prerequisite for risk reduction.
Women need targeted interventions. Menstrual hygiene management, safe toilets with water, and female-friendly health posts during monsoons are non-negotiable.
The dump yard must be remediated. No amount of housing upgrading will work as long as the Deonar landfill continues to emit methane and PM2.5. The report implicitly calls for waste-to-energy conversion and biomining, but warns that livelihood alternatives must be provided for waste pickers.
In conclusion, this case study of Deonar is a microcosm of a global crisis. It demonstrates that informal settlements are not just housing problems; they are the front lines of climate change. Without a radical shift towards pro-poor, risk-based, and health-centric urban planning, Mumbai’s forgotten population will remain trapped in a cycle of illness, eviction, and environmental collapse. The study is a powerful tool for academics, urban planners, and public health officials seeking to understand the real cost of climate inaction.
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