German city Karlsruhe will collaborate with orange city Nagpur for sustainable development. Nagpur Municipal Corporation and International Urban Cooperation programme of European Union has signed an agreement for this partnership.
The partnership agreement has been signed broadly to identify and extend areas for cooperation between the two cities. It is in line with EU–India global partnership, which identifies and intends to address various issues relevant to sustainable urban development.
Under this programme, Nagpur and Karlsruhe will prepare a joint local action plan specifically addressing the needs of sustainable urban development and smart cities mission of Government of India. Mayor Nanda Jichkar and municipal commissioner Virendra Singh signed the agreement on behalf of NMC while Pier Roberto Remitti, Director of IUC-India, represented IUC.
Before signing the agreement, a brief introduction about the project was given by Ashish Verma, sustainable development expert from IUC, India. He broadly presented the objective, implementation process and the support available to cities under the programme.
Ramnath Sonawane, chief executive officer of Nagpur Smart and Sustainable City Development Corporation Limited (NSSCDCL), gave a brief overview about Nagpur, opportunities and challenges that the city faced and how the IUC programme could support Nagpur in terms of knowledge exchange and implementation of smart city plans.
He highlighted the smart cities plans
- priority to integrate urban development and municipal services
- low carbon development and urban innovation, and
- sustainable mobility.
Nagpur and Karlsruhe will be working together on specific topics including urban mobility, low carbon development and urban innovation as well as integration of urban development and municipal services. Karlsruhe has been a leader in using smart technologies and its mobility models are very encouraging.
Jichkar said the adverse impact of climate change was no longer a global problem and it had started affecting the lives of people now.
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