Forum of Cities that Segregate

Centre for Science and Environment joins hands with 20 municipal bodies and launches ‘Forum of cities that segregate’ on 12th December, 2017 in India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. One day event was held where the participants were involved in the meeting and discussed the challenges of waste segregation. In the second half, the forum was launched by Sunita Narain, Director General, CSE and Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General, CSE. The main objective of the forum is to give participating cities a platform for exchanging knowledge on solid waste management (SWM).

The meeting was inaugurated by Chandra Bhushan and addressed the concept of forum of cities that segregate. The keynote address was delivered by Naveen Kumar Agarwal, Director and Mission Director of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India on SBM and its objectives while a special lecture was delivered by Aditya Narayan, Joint Director, Ministry of Forest and Environment & Climate Change (MoEF &CC), Government of India on the overview of solid waste management rules 2016. The meeting was attended by officials from 20 municipal bodies as well as journalists from across the country. All together, 60 participants attended the programme.

Sessions

The following sessions were taken during the meeting:

• Inaugural Session: The welcome address was given by Swati Singh Sambyal, Programme Manager, CSE.

• City presentations: The participating cities gave their presentation on different models of waste management in the meeting. The participating cities are Allapuzha, Amdavad, Balaghat, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bobbilli, Indore, EDMC, Gangtok, Gaya, Greater Hyderabad, Gurugram, Imphal, Panchghani, Patna, Mysuru, Muzaffarpur, SDMC, Thiruvananthapuram and Vajiapur The session was moderated by Chandra Bhushan, DDG, CSE.

• Model Framework for Segregation: Swati Singh Sambyal gave an overview on ‘Guidelines for managing municipal solid waste through segregation, reuse and recycling’. The session was moderated by Dr DD Basu, Advisor, CSE.

• Discussion on the Forum: Swati also highlighted the overview and objectives of the forum of cities that segregate. Later, the forum discussed how it would be working in future and also put forward recommendations for the same.

Major outcome:

• Twenty municipalities from 13 states have pledged to join this forum and to achieve the target of 100 per cent segregation and fulfill the vision of Clean India by 2019. CSE has agreed to assist these municipalities on building their capacity.

• A website will be developed and mechanism will be setup to track the progress made by cities.

• Forum cities will handhold other cities on technical, economic and social aspects of SWM

• Forum shall collate the feedback and inputs from the forum cities and provide policy-relevant information to the state governments and Centre on SWM.

• Documentation of best practices on forum website.

Launch of Forum of cities that segregate: In the evening, Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General, CSE, explained the concept of waste segregation model and briefed the audience on the purpose of the forum. The forum was launched and the participating cities were given the certificate of association by Sunita Narain, Director General, CSE which was followed by five cities sharing the highlights of the day of forum meeting, their existing systems and their challenges. Sunita Narain addressed the participants and other attendees on the topic of waste management and the relevance of source segregation. Lastly, a report on ‘Model Guidelines Decentralized Solid Waste Management in Urban Local Bodies’ was also released.