During a site visit to the Maharashtra Nature Park, the Munich TRANSCEND team got a good impression of an environmental project within the city boundaries of Mumbai. By transforming a former landfill the park was created and now shows a great diversity of plant, butterfly and bird species. Nowadays the park is primarily used for education purposes, however it also provides a recreational area for many citizens of Mumbai. Especially interesting for the TRANSCEND team was the location of the park right next to the Mithi river. The Mithi river is a major source of flooding in many parts of Mumbai. The view from the boundaries of the Nature park allowed an insight to still existing mangrove vegetation along the Mithi river. Mangroves can function as natural flood protection in coastal areas. However they are subjected to multiple pressures, for example the high development rate.

In the afternoon, the TRANSCEND team visited Hindmata in southern Mumbai. Hindmata is a chronic flooding hotspot. Due to its location in a sink, the shops located in that area are flooded during every monsoon season. Most of the shop houses are already risen. Yet as this is not enough, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) installed underground water storage tanks to alleviate the situation. While talking to a shop owner who is selling textiles, the TRANSCEND team got an impression on how the situation changed after the water tanks were installed. The shop owner stated that the water tanks do help to reduce flooding of his shop, however if the intensity increases and the capacity of the tanks is exceeded, he will go back to his former coping strategies. These include running the store with a decreased assortment during monsoon period and transferring the products to the second floor of the building.

Overall both site visits were very insightful on the difficulty to integrate flood adaptation and other environmental projects in such a highly complex and developed environment like Mumbai.