The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) that functions under the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Swiss Government may fund projects worth around Rs. 5 crore to mitigate the impact of climate change.
Shirish Sinha, Deputy Director of Cooperation, SDC, said that the Government planned to spend four million Swiss Francs on the four Indian cities it had selected for implementing short and long term projects. Each city would get about a million Francs.
The cities the SDC selected were Siliguri, Rajkot, Udaipur and Coimbatore.
With the money, the Coimbatore Corporation would implement short-term pilot projects on climate change mitigation and adaption – it could be water body management or waste water and solid waste management, urban transport improvement, etc.
The Corporation would also be encouraged to take up a long term project, for which the SDC would provide technical assistance and arrange for funds from international funding agencies, Mr. Sinha said. Coimbatore had shown interest in cleaning and developing Valankulam and Ukkadam Periyakulam tanks and scaling up the door-to-door waste collection system to five wards.
In the process of implementing the projects, the SDC or its partners would also train officers in the implementing agencies so as to build on their capacities. The objective, in short, was to mitigate the impact of climate change and prepare the cities to better cope with challenges.
On Tuesday, Mr. Sinha and two others from the SDC visited the two tanks and also held an interaction with members of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Coimbatore.
With Coimbatore getting selected for Smart Cities project and management of eight tanks being one of the components of the project, the SDC could also play a role in this.
The projects would begin soon as the SDC was in the final stages of deciding on the projects to support, he added. On Monday, the team had a discussion with Corporation officials.
