The new project has a huge potential in India. But to be really intelligent and smarter, the cities must also consider the impacts of climate change. India has to be prepared to face the risk of extreme weather conditions

The smart cities project is an ambitious $1.2 billion flagship initiative of the NDA Government. The project is proposed to be a large-scale version of the similar programme implemented in Gujarat and is expected to catapult nearly 100 cities across the country to world class standards. Once implemented, the initiative has the potential to create more than 10 lakh jobs through the construction and development of new urban spaces.

Delhi is envisaged as the first city under this project to be transformed into a ‘smart city’. To achieve this the city of  Barcelona, Spain and Singapore have agreed to enter into a technical collaboration. The collaboration will also assist to enable superior resource management for the city besides ensuring modern governance that’s integrated with cutting-edge technology.

According to Union Minister for Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs M Venkaiah Naidu, consultations with all the parties have been concluded and the ambitious smart city project is all set to roll out this April. If all goes as planned, the project will be a major initiative to take off formally, after the ‘Clean Ganga Project’ that is already making a steady progress.

Smart cities will hopefully alleviate urban stagnation and weed out the environmentally unsustainable urban areas by retrofitting and redeveloping them in accordance with the goals of the smart city concept. The project is sure to initiate a flurry of construction activities in the selected cities and is crucial for the Urban Development Ministry to set rules for mandatory green construction.

Green construction can pave the way for energy efficient buildings that are also able to conserve water resources by incorporating wastewater treatments plants and rain harvesting systems. This, coupled with public transport run on clean energy and solar-powered streetlights, can be a vital low-carbon concept for these cities and ensure the success of the initiative. But to be really intelligent and smarter, the cities must also consider the impacts of climate change.

The UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change predicts, rising global temperatures can cause an increase of up to 82 cm (32 inches) in sea levels by late this century due to melting ice and expansion of water as it warms, threatening coastal cities from Shanghai to San Francisco. Metropolises such as these worldwide are grappling with the problem of extreme weather conditions that are bringing even the best-planned cities to their knees and ravaging the economies.

For instance, in 2013, floods in the ferocious rain had caused heavy flooding in the Philippine capital Manila and shaved 2.3 per cent off the country’s gross domestic product, while the 2011 flooding in Bangkok caused Thailand’s fourth-quarter GDP figures that year to contract by nine per cent..

The IPCC also specifically mentions the risk to be faced by India and its 1.2 billion population from extreme weather conditions such as floods and cyclones. The US-based World Resources Institute echoes this disconcerting forecast, by citing past events such as the Mumbai floods in 2005 and the recent disaster in Srinagar and cautions that India’s risk from floods is only bound to increase exponentially.

As India sets to join the global smart city club, it will do well for the Urban Development Ministry to incorporate strong measures that can help smart cities to be climate resilient as well as have uninterrupted economic growth. This can be achieved by galvanising the State Governments into action, which in turn must spur the respective local municipalities to work on strategies that can minimise casualties and devastation of property caused by the natural disasters.

These strategies must address basic civic infrastructure issues by setting up better sewage and drainage systems that actually work well during the monsoons in order to prevent water logging and flooding. In addition, it is crucial to curb the increasing rate of river flooding; this can be achieved by conserving riverbanks by discouraging sand mining and undertaking riverbed dredging on regular basis.

The Government should also ensure that the smarter cities have a human face by taking care of marginalised people living in slums who are the hardest hit when natural disasters strike. In this regard, India can adopt the sterling example set by Proshika — a charity organisation based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Proshika has launched a climate-linked insurance scheme for the residents living in over 2,000 slums in various locations in Dhaka to fight natural disasters.

Through the ‘smart city’ project, the NDA Government has a never before opportunity to make history by changing the face of urban India. This effort must be based on the dictum of creating ‘smarter’ cities that are climate resilient as well.