Leaning to Live with the Monsoons in India - Sourav Biswas

This video is one of four in the Monsoon Intelligence Webinar. It explores monsoon intelligence, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and river governance and reimagines climate-responsive cities across the Asia-Pacific, highlighting how integrated policies, nature-based water systems, and locally grounded knowledge can reshape urban waterscapes, supporting adaptive, resilient approaches to flooding, ecosystem recovery, and long-term urban sustainability in an era of climate uncertainty. Sourav Biswas demonstrates how it is possible to transform degraded urban water bodies, peri-urban open land, and grey infrastructure footprints into sponge parks — designed to slow, store, and recharge monsoon rainfall — integrating biodiversity, phytoremediation ponds, social amenity, and ecological education. In Chennai, these sites become double infrastructure: stormwater management and rare public open space simultaneously. Landscape architects, municipal governments, and state agencies can deliver this through public procurement — Sponge Collaborative has proven this is achievable without private developers, by training public contractors to implement living systems. Monitoring has shown reductions in surface temperature within shaded sponge park areas (measured at 12–16°C reduction versus adjacent concrete); stormwater volume retained and discharged during cyclone events; aquifer recharge rates from infiltration ponds; biodiversity established (60+ bird species recorded at one site within months of opening); social use intensity via time-lapse monitoring; and replication: 200+ engineers from 6 Indian states trained through the Sponge Park Manual to date. Sourav Kumar Biswas is the Director of Resilient Infrastructure at Sponge Collaborative, an interdisciplinary firm specializing in integrated planning and implementation of Nature-based solutions. He has more than 13 years of experience in urban and landscape planning, international development, geospatial analysis, and visual communication design. He has worked in more than 20 countries in Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. He is the lead author of 'The Sponge Handbook: Chennai' an authoritative visual compendium of Sponge City solutions published by GiZ India and co-editor of 'From the South: Global Perspectives on Landscape and Territory.' He has a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University and has worked with reputed design and international development firms including Sasaki, SLA, AECOM, GeoAdaptive, and Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure.