Chennai Corporation officials will gain insights into global best practices and the workings of funding agencies to promote civic infrastructure projects designed to improve the city’s resilience.
Starting Tuesday, Corporation officials will receive assistance on following global practices from 100 Resilient Cities — an organisation dedicated to helping cities —on topics such as water bodies, disaster management, civic engagement, informal settlements and unplanned growth.
At a meeting on Tuesday, Corporation Commissioner D. Karthikeyan held a meeting with Michael Berkowitz, president of 100 Resilient Cities, on preliminary resilience assessment, a comprehensive analysis of resilience strengths and challenges in the city and how to get funding for infrastructure projects for better resilience.
Mr. Berkowitz said cities had a hard time getting access to funding for civic infrastructure projects. “But a lot of private money is not able to find projects. Multilateral agencies, bilateral agencies, private investors, institutional investors are looking to invest,” said Mr. Berkowitz, stressing on the need for mobilising resources and identifying opportunities for civic infrastructure development to mitigate disaster.
For example, officials pointed to the delay in getting funding for many of the civic infrastructure projects to reduce flood risk.
“The preliminary resilience assessment is an effort led by the city of Chennai with support from 100 Resilient Cities pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation,” said R. Krishna Mohan, Chief Resilience Officer for Chennai.
The team from 100RC engaged with and interviewed representatives of major local and state government departments, the city’s universities, think tanks, active civil society groups and the private sector through citizen and expert surveys and expert working groups in the past six months.
Stakeholder and community engagement is the core tenet of the resilience strategy. The consultations lead to key six discovery areas for the next phase of resilience-building. Chennai Corporation will focus its resilience efforts and key questions on how to aggregate on-going efforts, initiatives, and expertise and institutionalise government’s ability to coordinate and leverage them; promote efficient and responsible water management practices among end-users, drive action on solid waste and encroachments that influence the water system, said an official.
