The Climate change Centre (C-cube) within the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), instituted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), has partnered with the Integrated Research & Action for Development (IRADe), for developing climate-smart cities across India.
C-cube will work with IRADe’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Development and Climate Change to strengthen the capacities of cities to understand, implement and monitor the actions needed for addressing climate change impacts in the local context of these cities.
IRADe’s Center of Excellence (CoE) with its 12 years of research and expertise, will impart technical knowledge and guidance to C-cube, in making Indian cities climate-smart. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between C-cube, NIUA and IRADe CoE was signed by Prof. Jyoti Parikh, Executive Director, IRADe and Hithesh Vaidhya, Director, NIUA.
Rohit Magotra, Deputy Director, IRADe shared that the MoU had established an agreement to jointly work together to cooperate and collaborate on various aspects of climate change and cities through the climate-smart cities alliance. Both the organisations would collaborate and work together to handhold the cities on their climate-smart assessment framework, develop and share knowledge products, capacity building modules and tools, advocacy, and innovative practices for mainstreaming and implementing city-level climate action in India.
The aspects of climate change were a pressing environmental concern in cities and are creating additional stress on urban infrastructure and lifeline services. In this scenario, adaptation and mitigation to climate risks in cities are an important aspect of the Indian government’s efforts to fulfil its commitment to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In India, most of the cities were vulnerable to these climates induced natural hazards. As per the National Disaster Management Authority, 58.6 per cent of the Indian landmass is vulnerable to flooding and river erosions, 5,700 km of the country’s coastline is prone to cyclones and tsunamis and more than half (68 per cent) of its cultivable area is drought-prone.