Integrated Resource Management in Asian cities: the Urban Nexus

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Project Summary

The Project “Integrated Resource Management in Asian cities: the Urban Nexus”, implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) aims to introduce and promote the adoption of Nexus approaches in urban development planning processes in Indian cities, specifically focusing on the Nexus sectors water, energy and food security. The Urban Nexus calls for an integrated approach to planning and management, fostering inherent synergies between sectors to mitigate trade-offs, promoting circular economy and thereby ensuring sustainable urban development. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide policy and action recommendations to motivate and capacitate project cities and other partners to start using integrated Nexus approach in their urban planning thereby resulting in optimized resource management, circular economy and improved institutional performance.

Subsequent to the success of piloting the Nexus approach in Nashik City, Maharashtra, (2013-14) under the “Operationalization of the Nexus Approach in Cities and Metropolitan Regions” supported by the GIZ, ICLEI South Asia will provide support to the GIZ Urban Nexus Project mentioned above for implementing the Nexus approach in 2 cities in India. The GIZ Urban Nexus team along with ICLEI South Asia will provide technical support to the selected project cities. Local, Regional and National contexts will be considered to identify drivers and institutional frameworks that could influence the adoption and functioning of a Nexus approach in urban development processes to realize cross-sectoral synergies.

One of the objectives of the project is also to introduce Local-National Dialogues in the project cities which focuses on bringing all the levels of governance i.e cities, State and the National together to discuss on improving resource-use patterns etc. The project will strongly link its activities with the 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the outcomes of Habitat III (New Urban Agenda) using Nexus as “tool” to reach the SDGs with specific focus on Goal 11.The project is for period of 30 months and has started from May, 2016.

ICLEI South Asia had called for Expression of Interest (EoI) from Indian cities who would like to be part of the project. Four (4) cities were selected out of eleven (11) cities that responded to the call. The team from GIZ (Bangkok) comprising of Ms. Ruth Erlbeck, Mr. Ralp Trosse and Mr. Rashane SalaNgarm along with Mr. Emani Kumar from ICLEI SA visited the 4 cities viz. Rajkot and Surat in Gujarat, Warangal from Telangana and Dehradun from Uttarakhand. The team discussed in details with the officials along with the State Government about the objectives of the project and also various initiatives and expectations out of the project.

The NEXUS Water, Energy & Food Security Resource Platform is promoted by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the European Union, for more information click here.