ICLEI puts cities on stage at the 6th EuroIndia Summit on “Greening Cities” in Hyderabad

29 October 2013

 

The Indian cities of Panaji, Ichalkaranji, Kishangarh and Jaisalmer attended, as part of ICLEI South Asia’s delegation, the 6th EuroIndia Summit on “Greening Cities”, held in Hyderabad on 21-22nd October 2013. Organized by EuroIndia in collaboration with the European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC), the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), supported by the Indian Ministry of Urban Development and with ICLEI as the Principal Supporter, the summit stressed on issues like smart and inclusive cities, waste management, sustainable urban mobility, water management, energy efficiency and security, urban heritage management and tourism development. 

 

The event, that was honored during the inaugural by the presence of the National Minister of State Urban Development, Ms. Deepa Dasmunshy, and the Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. M Maheedhar Reddy, highlighted the need to improve the quality of life and economic competitiveness to make cities become more resource efficient and environment friendly. The importance of building “lateral networks” – so in an horizontal way across deparments and sectors, and not only vertically – was also underlined. Mr. Arun Maira, Member of the Planning Commission, Government of India, drew some light on the importance of locally developed solutions “Solutions developed locally are more contextual and more appropriate to pursue sustainable development in the respective cities…

 

ICLEI South Asia invited Indian city officials to bring out real and relevant issues to the discussion table and these cities had a lot to say on the matter, as they are actively involved in ICLEI’s projects: Panaji is a satellite city for Promoting Low Emission Urban Development Strategies (Urban LEDS), an Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) project city and an Earth Hour City Challenge (EHCC) 2013 competitor; Ichalkaranji, Kishangarh and Jaisalmer are, together with Solapur, involved in the recently launched AdoptIUWM EC funded project, on Integrated Urban Water Management.

 

In the session on waste management, Mr. Sanjit Rodrigues, Commissioner of Panaji, presented the challenges related to his city, mostly related to the high influx of tourists, as well as the city’s outstanding achievements in terms of waste management, Panaji having managed to become a completely bin-free city through the application of the 3R principle (re-using, reducing and recycling) combined with awareness raising activities. Mr. Rodrigues, in his intervention during the discussion with the EU ambassador on ‘Governance’, also highlighted the “need for cooperation among all levels”. 

 

In the session on water management Ichalkaranji was represented by Mr.Rajendra Y Joshi, Hydraulic Engineer, who presented the  water challenges the city is facing, especially regarding water pollution and transmission losses; an Integrated Urban Water Management approach, such as the one envisaged in ICLEI’s AdoptIUWM project, was listed as one of the ways to tackle these challenges.

 

“Greening cities” was a platform for cities and representatives to know more about European technologies and include them in their planning. Cities now look forward to taking these initial discussions further and seeing some actions implemented with support from the EuroIndia center. 

 

The important role of technologies and the need to ‘localise’ them was confirmed by the Ambassador of the Delegation of EU to India, Mr. Joao Cravinho, who in his speech praised ICLEI’s Urban LEDS project as an example of cooperation among cities and technology transfer and utilization of technology. “The solutions for the future are concentrated in cities, which are needed to address global concern”, Mr. Cravinho added. 

 

Conference final programme: click here.

 

ICLEI puts cities on stage at the 6th EuroIndia Summit on “Greening Cities” in Hyderabad
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