Background

The EU aims to contribute to the sustainable urbanisation development and application of sustainable urban and energy policies. Increasing demographic and environmental pressure oblige Indian cities to transport and adopt resilient and sustainable ways of development, considering all the aspects. The EU promotes the partnerships in order to assure the exchangeson best practices, innovative solutions, technologies and long term planning for safer and more sustainable urban habitats.

Based on EU-Mumbai Partnership experience and lessons learned, the EU-India dialogue on sustainable urbanisation matured over 2016 and 2017 and in October 2017 a Joint Declaration was agreed to set up a Partnership on Smart and Sustainable Urbanisation to promote the cooperation between EU and India on sustainable urban development. The Partnership considers the respective capabilities of India and the EU for implementing the global commitments in the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the Paris Climate Change agreement, as well as Indian flagship programmes as Swashh Bharat, the 100 Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT. The Partnership will provide opportunities in water, air quality, resource efficiency and circular economy, clean energy, energy efficiency, greening urban transport, ICT solutions, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in cities.

As tested at pilot Metropolitan Labs in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, its further development will contribute to timely implementation of actions outlined as priorities in the Work Plan for 2018-2020 based on Joint Declaration.These actions will allow linking the best practices and experience from various projects related to smart cities and the urban sector like the EU-Mumbai Partnership, the International Urban Cooperation action, the ICT standardisation action, the Air quality Initiative and others, generalising the results to feed into the national policy agenda. The preparation towards the Partnership was supported in 2016 and 2017 by a services contract funded by the Partnership Instrument through its Policy Support Facility (PSF).

The Project will closely work with the other EU-funded projects such as International Urban Cooperation project; India EU Water Partnership project; Clean Energy and Climate Partnership project, Resource Efficiency Initiative project, Business support to EU-India Policy dialogue project.

Strategy / Approach:

The following strategy is proposed for contract implementation and includes a description of the activities necessary to achieve the following specific objectives:

► To facilitate a coherent involvement of the EU and its member states, jointly with the relevant Indian authorities, to further develop and implement the work programme 2018-2020; 

► To allow the replication of EU policies, approaches and best practices, including those from EU-funded projects in India, and facilitate opportunities on urbanisation issues for EU companies; and 

► To engage the EU-India urbanisation dialogue in new sub-sectors such as mobility. 

The above specific objectives will contribute to the overall objective of the action: to support the implementation of the Smart and Sustainable Urbanisation Partnership for India and the EU as per the agreed work programme 2018-2020. 

The new project will encourage synergies with the International Urban Cooperation Project; India-EU Water Partnership Project (urban water management in cities); Clean Energy and Climate Partnership project (innovative solutions for cities); Resource Efficiency Initiative Project (urban flows of resources and circular economy); Business support to EU-India Policy dialogue project (inclusion of EU companies and SME’s solutions and technologies); The initiatives of specific EU Member States. 

And will consider the results and lessons learnt from the following projects: The EU Technical Cooperation for Environment in India Project (which focuses on capacity building regarding waste and wastewater management); The EU and International Finance Corporation Eco-Cities Programme; The “Preparation for an EU-India Sustainable Urbanisation Partnership - Technical assistance” that was successfully carried out by the main part of the team members in 2016-2017; 

Tracks and Activities under each:

Track 1. Support to the EU and the MoHUA to implement the Urbanisation Partnership through TA:

In order to support the EU and the MoHUA the following activities will be implemented by the Consultant:

► Coordination and administrative services for the Partnership on smart and sustainable urbanisation; 

► Regular update and definition of a 3-year rolling work programme for the Partnership; 

► Support to the 1st meeting of the EU-India Urbanisation Joint Working Group; 

► Exchange of experiences, views and positions between EU and Indian government stakeholders in the areas of smart and sustainable urbanisation; 

► Support policy development and implementation and capacity building of Indian stakeholders (e.g. through studies, training, speakers’ events, webminars, and workshops presenting EU best practices in smart and sustainable urbanisation); 

► Development of content for the brochure on EU-India Urbanisation Partnership. 

Track 2. Coordination of stakeholders and development of an EU-India platform of exchanges:

This component will be based on the following activities:

► Regular coordination with the EU MS; 

► Coordination with other EU and EU MS’ initiatives in India to feed into the high level urbanisation dialogue and other EU-India dialogues, namely in the field of water, air quality, resource efficiency and circular economy, clean energy, energy efficiency, greening urban transport, ICT solutions, and climate change mitigation and adaptation in cities; 

► Update stakeholder mapping, including with SCOs and the private sector. 

Track 3. Organisation of Sustainable Urbanisation Planning workshops (Metropolitan Labs) in 4 different cities in India (cities will be determined during the Project activities):

The following activities will be undertaken within this component:

► Development of a specific curriculum for the events; 

► Organisation of 4 workshops of 1 day each for 20-30 participants from relevant entities in each of the 4 selected cities; 

► Recruitment of relevant non-key experts as resource persons for the workshops in India in a close consultation with the EUD first and some other stakeholders as well. However, the first possible candidates that are very interested in this action, and some of them already participated in the previous stages (“Preparation for an EU-India Sustainable Urbanisation Partnership – TA”), signed the statements of availability and are already presented in the present offer; 

► Capitalisation of experience. 

Track 4. Support the development of the EU-Mumbai Partnership: 

► Identification of 1 to 2 priority areas and the subsequent formulation of possible projects in the identified priority areas; 

► Support to implementation of the Partnership.