Training cum Workshop on ‘Action Plans for Making Cities River- and Water-Sensitive’

Dates: April 11 - 13, 2022
Last Date to Apply: April 6, 2022
Course Duration: Three days
Venue: CSE - Anil Agarwal Environment Training Institute (AAETI), Nimli, Rajasthan  
Course Type: Residential

CSE - School of Water and Waste (SWW)in partnership with National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) and supported byNational Mission Clean Gangaorganised a 3-day residential training cum workshop on ‘Action Plans for Making Cities River- and Water-Sensitive’from April 11-13, 2022.

Covid-19 Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has been prepared by the admin dept. of CSE, taking into account all Covid-19 precautions and social distancing measures, which have been followed during the residential training at AAETI. Capacity building aimed to help cities develop implementable action plan for mainstreaming river – water centric planning and development. The training cum workshop has been developed to help cities to identify, design and implement appropriate interventions best suited to respective cities at various scales that can be incorporated in Master Plans (including Development Plans/ Zonal Plan, Area Development Plan cum Infrastructure Development schemes) or the Citywide Water – Sanitation Plans to be prepared by each local body under various national urban missions – namely AMRUT 2.0, SBM 2.0 and others.

A total of 16 participants attended the training, which comprised of young, mid-career and experienced professionals i.e., architects, planners, engineers, academicians etc. from in both private and public sector. The participants were from organisations like; AILSG, IPE Global, REPL, M/S Development 2050, Architect P.K Das and Associates and Better Bhalswa.

The training began on April 11, 2022 (Day 0) with a tour of the water features (DWWTS of 8KLD and RWH structures) at CSE campus followed by a site visit to Neela Hauz Biodiversity Park, Delhi. Dr Yasir Arafat, Neela Hauz Biodiversity Park showcased a nature-based solution to revive Neela Hauz, where natural wetland system is used to treat wastewater entering the lake. Aspects of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity for pollution abatement and lake / wetland management were also discussed during the site visit.After that all participants and faculty departed from Delhi to AAETI.

Day 1 (April 12, 2022) began with a room-mapping exercise as an ice-breaking introductory session, where participants also shared their experience and linkages with urban rivers in their cities.Kick-starting Day 1, Dhruv Pasricha, Programme Officer, CSE, inaugurated the training programme, and set the context for the 3-day training cum workshop, by highlighting the issues in urban water management and the indispensable need of integrated water cycle management with cost effective water sensitive design interventions and river sensitive master plans in India. This was followed by a small brainstorming exercise on the issues and challenges- ‘problem tree’ in urban watermanagement and the opportunities for the same using Mentimeter and discussions.

This was followed by a brainstorming exercise on preparation of a baseline for water sensitive plans, moderated by Ms Vishakha Jha and Ms Nikita Madan, NIUA. The participants had todecide what all information should be incorporated in a river related baseline for a city and place them on the graph based on the importance and difficulty in getting the particular data.

Following this, discussion on how to preparevision, objectives and approach for Water Sensitive Planning was steered by Dhruv Pasricha, CSE where he used various examples to guide the participants to frame vision and goals for a river- water- sensitive master plans. In the next session, Nikita Madan, NIUA, presented on various planning instruments for making water sensitive master plans. She discussed on various urban river challenges and the master plan’s scope to address these challenges.She also presented several case examples of master plans such asCalgary’s municipal development plan, 2020, city of Montrose, Colorado’s Envision 2040 comprehensive plan, the New Orleans master plan – 2030, Delhi’s master plan – 2041, Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Plan – 2031 and Noida Master plan 2031 to showcase how these plans are addressing different challenges. This was followed by a group exercise on stakeholder mapping and then Continuum Walk (role-play exercise) where participants were divided into groups representing seven different stakeholders. The objective of the exercise was to expose participants to the various engagement strategies amongst different stakeholder groups and analyse a range of conflicts and alliances which emerge out of a stakeholder review for urban river-water- sensitive master plan.

In the following session, Shivani, CSE, delivered a presentation on ‘Interventions for Water Sensitive Planning:Rainwater/Stormwater Harvesting for Urban Flooding and Groundwater Management’ where she discussed scope of WSUDP interventions in the Indian context with existing provision and what are the criteria for different scales for implementing WSUDP (city/zonal scale, neighbourhood/institutional scale, individual scale). She supported her presentation with several case examples at each scale in Indian context.

Day 1 was concluded with the AAETI Campus tour conducted by Jyoti Parsad and Dhruv Pasricha, CSE where they showcased the various water features including DWWTs and RWH systems at AAETI. They also discussed on the various design considerations and O&M of the water-sensitive features.

Day 2 (April 12, 2022) began with an early morning forest trek in the Aravali hillocks behind the campus, where participants explored the local biodiversity and natural terrain. Technical sessions began with a Group exercise on reflections on the learnings from Days 0 and 1. This was followed by a session by Dhruv Pasricha, CSE on strategies for Urban River and Waterbodies Management where various strategies for catchment area, buffer areas, in-situ interventions, etc. were presented and discussed in detail. Short, medium and long-term strategies for urban waterbodies management were also discussed. Following this, Jyoti Parsad, CSE delivered a session on Wastewater Management and Pollution abatement at different scales where he discussed on several decentralised wastewater management strategies and technologies.

Post sessions, the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) group exercise on identifying opportunity areas for implementing Water Sensitive Planning in respective cities was introduced. The participants were divided into two groups and were given datasets for City ‘X’ for two different geographies and. The participants were required to formulate vision and goals for their city in view of themes provided to them as ‘people’ and ‘planet’ and provide long-medium and short-term strategies and roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders. This was followed with presentations by each groupon their river-water-sensitive plans with a maximum of seven minutes per group.The groups were marked on the aspects of vision, objectives, stakeholder review, andidentification of opportunity areas for WSUDP strategies in their city. The Planet group was adjudged the winner of the DIY exercise.The winning group was presented with CSE goodies, followed by certificate distribution and a short feedback session.

Training Coordinator

Dhruv Pasricha Programme Officer, CSE Mobile: 8527447891 Email: dhruv.pasricha@cseindia.org