CLIMATE SMART CITIES

The Climate Smart Cities (CSC) Project is an initiative under the Urban Development-Smart Cities vertical of the Sustainable Urban Development Cluster of GIZ in India. It is part of the technical cooperation to the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, under the International Climate Initiative.

With three implementation partners, the National Institutes of Urban Affairs (NIUA, India), the German Institutes of Urban Affairs (Difu, Germany) and TU Berlin (TUB, Germany), the project focuses on supporting cities through various instruments (technical handholding, training, peer learning) in implementing smart solutions and by that contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

With the objective of anchoring climate friendly solutions for urban infrastructure projects and area based development in the planning and implementation of projects under the Smart City Mission of the Government of India, the project has partnered with three cities and their respective state governments- Bhubaneshwar (Odisha), Kochi (Kerala) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu).

NIUA’s role as one of the implementing partners is to provide contextual technical support in capacity building and handholding activities as well as network building in the partner cities, towards the implementation of climate friendly measures.

Under these components, a series of activities are being carried out:

• Setting up of National help desk

• Support in implementation of smart measures in the partner cities

• Development of training modules and training of trainers

• Development and dissemination of working aids

• Establishment of multi-tier networking platform

• Convening of networking and handholding events and knowledge exchange

• Support to Indo-German Working Group activities

The project approach is practical and consultative, bringing together the various stakeholders in moving towards the implementation of climate friendly solutions in Indian Smart Cities.

While the project targets decision makers in institutions at national and sub-national levels responsible for the development and implementation of climate-friendly measures, it will also act as a facilitator by promoting cooperation between national and sub-national actors, by technically supporting international advisory and exchange formats and by supporting implementation of measures.

One of the many achievements of the project so far is the development of the ClimateSmart Cities Assessment Framework along with MoHUA and GIZ, the first round of which was executed in 2019 and second round was conducted in 2020.

The project has also developed training material and Training of Trainers Manual on four CSCAF related thematic indicators, in order to build the capacities of cities towards implementing climate informed actions. This material was being disseminated to Smart Cities and regional training institutes through hands on training workshops.

Web Link:

Click here for more information of the project: https://urban-industrial.in/csc/

Click here to access training and capacity building resources: Training and Capacity Building (https://urban-industrial.in/csc/resources/training_and_capacity_building/index_eng.html)

Click here for more information on the process adopted for Phase 1: https://smartnet.niua.org/csc/dashboard.html

Web Link: Click here for more information on Climate Smart Cities project: https://www.urban-industrial.in/csc