In order to mitigate the adverse impact of ‘climate change’ such as floods, cyclones wildfires etc which continue to disrupt life on an almost regular basis, green solution is the only way to over come the problem, said Vice President (VP) M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday.

Naidu was speaking in the 4th ‘Asia Pacific Forum’ on urban resilience and adaptation-resilient cities Asia Pacific 2019. The three day event was hosted by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation in association with UN (ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability).

“More than 60 per cent of the world’s population resides in Asia and nearly half of this resides in cities and towns. It is extremely crucial to link every aspect of urbanization with sustainability. Cities account for 2/3rd of global energy demand and 70 per cent of carbon emissions. The new urban infrastructure should be low carbon, green and climate resilient,” the VP said.

Talking about green initiatives taken in the country, Naidu said “India is now one of the global leaders in addressing this challenge head on. As recently announced in the 24th conference of parities on climate change at Katowice, Poland, India is well on its way to achieve our stated nationally determined contributions, he said.

 “Massive migration is taking place from rural to urban areas as enhanced facilities are available in the cities. The cities are engine of growth. It is the duty of the Government to take care of urban and rural areas,” Naidu said.

 SDMC Commissioner Dr Puneet Kumar Goel stated that climate change is a global challenge and its impacts are serious, urgent and growing. “No nation, large or small, wealthy or poor can escape from impacts of climate change. The only way to come back these climate change impacts and to become a climate resilient nation is to respond to boldly, swiftly and collectively,” he said.

Highlighting the initiatives taken by the civic body in this regard, he added that SDMC is actively contributing in tackling the issue of climate change and sustainable development by taking multi-pronged actions.

“The SDMC has taken several projects to shift towards clean development. The replacement of conventional street lights to three lakh energy efficient LED lights resulted in the savings of 80 million units per annum and savings of 10 million US dollars, generation of MW solar power on rooftop of MCD buildings helped in generating 10 million units solar power and subsequent savings of 2.2 million US dollars during 2018-19 after internal consumption and export of excess power,” he said.

The Commissioner further said that the introduction of 75 electric cars in place of fossil propelled vehicles also helped in reduction of Co2 emission. All these measures have brought reduction of 75000 ton Co2 per annum. 

The SDMC is also taking result oriented steps for management of solid waste. “Our waste to energy plant has been one of the steps to convert waste to electricity.

The SDMC has recently set up a waste to wonder park which is displaying seven replicas of seven wonders of world,” he said. SDMC Mayor Narendra Chawla said that this event is being organized in India for the first time and 31 countries are taking part in this. He said that Delhi is facing some of the adverse effects of climate change and a dialogue on this is the need of hour.