My City My Responsibility - Experiences from Smart cities of Tamil Nadu

Mandatory pics with Sheila and Ajita

Mandatory pics with Myron and Ajita

Dear All, 

Last week I attended two workshops in Tamil Nadu - one on People's agenda for Smart Salem and another on People's agenda for Smart Madurai, organized by SCINDeA, INECC and LAYA Resource Centre. SCINDeA stands for South Central India Network for Development Alternatives and is a network of voluntary organisations that promotes sustainable development through people's participation. Their work areas are parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. SCINDeA was crucially involved in arranging these workshops for the people of Salem and Madurai, through active inputs from INECC and LAYA.

Since I am working on developing a roadmap for Sustainably Smart Pune by 2030, I had the opportunity to present our study to the citizens of both the cities. Dr. Priyadarshini Karve who is spearheading this study believes that the outcomes of our study may or may not help Pune to develop as a Sustainably Smart city, though it will definitely be instrumental in making other cities coming behind us develop in a Sustainably Smart manner. This opportunity actually created a platform for the same. 

Dr. Sheila B, VC Dr. Kolandaivel and Mr Kamraj
addressing the group

The first workshop was held in Salem city, the crowd represented academicians, NGO representatives, bureaucrats, trade association members and citizens of Salem. The city executive engineer Mr. Kamraj presented the smart city plan for Salem. The plan stressed on developing physical infrastructure in the form of flyovers, parking provisions, road development and ICT like setting up E-toilets and kiosks etc. According to a SWOT analysis of the city, this city faces threats like congestion, poor urban services and heavily polluted river similar to what we are facing in Pune. However their smart city plan did not really focus on improving these services. It rather seemed to be focused on creating additional inefficient and fancy structures which will eventually widen the socioeconomic inequity in the city. The plan was immediately objected by the citizens and members of various city-based associations. The critics pointed to the inconsiderate approach towards weaker sections of the society. I presented our study where we look at development through three lenses i.e socio economic inequity, local environmental impacts and climate change aspects like carbon footprint and climate vulnerability. The approach was appreciated by all the people sitting in the hall, however the sad part was that the city engineer had left by then. Nevertheless, we wanted to inform the citizens on sustainable urban development approaches and that was very well achieved. It is now hoped that the citizens will take up the issue at the municipal level, armed with all the knowledge inputs gained from the meeting!  

Smart Salem Group Photo

Dr. G.Balaji addressing the citizens

The second workshop was held in Madurai. It was a pleasant surprise to know that a city conservation architect Dr. G. Balaji was working in collaboration with the city engineer to develop the smart city plan. His ideas very well resonated with our approach on Sustainably Smart planning. Though the smart city plan of Madurai focused on improving physical infrastructure around famous heritage structure Meenakshi Amman Temple and suburbs, the core issues in the city like waste management and insufficient water supply still seemed to be neglected. However, Dr. G.Balaji pointed out that the scope of the smart city mission lies in developing physical infrastructure only. With the overemphasis on infrastructure, critical aspects like climate change vulnerability, local environmental impacts and socioeconomic inequity are being gravely ignored. On presenting our study (though Dr. G. Balaji had left by then), active members of the society, academicians, students, consultants, bureaucrats and members from various different organizations appreciated our work and agreed with our approach and the possibilities of using this approach to address shortcomings in the smart city plan. How much will it really impact is an open question, but we have certainly ignited the spirit of sustainability in the minds of the people and I am really glad about it. 

Smart Madurai Group Photo

Citizens raising their voice for the city

Meanwhile, Myron Mendes from INECC who stressed upon INECC's slogan People's Voices in Policy Choices conducted an activity where he distributed hand shaped cards to the audience where each person had to write about 'what they as the citizens of the city would do to make their city Sustainably smart'. They had to put these hand prints on the wall sized poster that showcased the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with focus on SDG 11 i.e. making cities Sustainable.  

Ajita Tiwari who is the national facilitator for INECC summed up the learnings from both the workshops as to how people's perspective is important in any development in the city. 

I would like to thank and congratulate Dr. Sheila Benjamin from SCINDeA and her efficient team for organizing these workshops successfully. We now hope that the conversations triggered off by the events will continue in the two cities, and impact their individual development trajectories in a positive way. 

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: The importance of 2015

If you are interested in sustainability issues, 2015 is a critically important year. Yet, I don't see much being written about this in the print or electronic media. So what is this importance of 2015?

Two important milestones are being reached in 2015. Firstly, 2015 is the end point for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and secondly, the future of the world's response to the challenge of climate change will be decided in this year. 

The MDGs were a set of ambitious quantifiable goals set by the United Nations that have been supposedly guiding the policies of governments across the world over the last 15 years. What were the goals, and where do we stand on the achievement?

The eight goals are presented in the image, pictorially. Every year, the governments across the world have reported their status of achievement of the goals to the UN and these have been compiled to produce global status reports. The drawback of the process of course is that the report relies entirely on self reporting. And yet, one can conclude that considerable progress has been made on several of the goals over the 15 year period. The process has not been totally free of controversy. Several researchers have questioned the choice of the goals itself, for example. One glaring omission has been that there was no goal associated with access to energy, which in itself would have made it easier to meet some of the goals. For example, if a community gets reliable access to energy, it allows the people to start businesses that are likely to get them out of poverty, allows access to information and knowledge that may improve the access to education, and helps the local medical facilities to upgrade to provide better health services, etc. In spite of the limitations, one cannot deny that the MDG project provided a focus for national and international efforts to solve some of the pressing problems faced by humanity at the turn of the century. 

The final reports from the countries will go to UN at the end of 2015, and a picture of how successful the project was will emerge when the reports are compiled. However, looking at the trends so far, it is believed that considerable progress is likely to be reported on almost all goals. In the meanwhile, the process of putting in place goals for post-2015 has also been underway. A set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are now being contemplated by the UN. What are the SDGs? I will talk about these in a future MUSINGS, but I urge everyone to look these up!  

For now, let's talk about the second milestone being reached in 2015. We all know that climate change is a global challenge that we are facing today. The previous attempt for a global solution was the Kyoto Protocol (KP), the time period assigned to its implementation ended in 2012. However, the target of reduction in green house gas emissions was not achieved at the end of 2012, nor was a new mechanism agreed upon. So the time period of KP was extended, and by end of 2015, the governments of the world are expected to agree on a mechanism to succeed it. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will meet in November-December 2015 to hammer out an agreement between the nations of the world regarding how the humanity should take on the challenge of climate change in the future. A lot of political muscle flexing has been going on in public since the beginning of the year on this issue, and I am sure a lot of negotiations are going on behind the curtains. 

It is important for responsible citizens of the world to be aware of these processes. Our future depends on these, and we should pay more attention to what is happening. Furthermore, we should try and influence our respective governments to focus on the long term future of the humanity rather than the short term interests of their own political vote banks. 

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com