India’s Smart Coastal City: Nature-based Solution

Resilience has become a key focus in the urban development in India, with an emphasis on blue and green infrastructure. Two notable programs, the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), aim to enhance the governance and sustainability of Indian cities through infrastructure and management reforms. While the Smart Cities Mission prioritizes e-services and digitization, AMRUT focuses on components such as water supply, urban transport, and green spaces. These urban development missions can serve as a platform for implementing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) by leveraging natural resources and ecological systems to improve urban resilience.

One city that showcases the potential of NbS is Panaji in Goa, which faces challenges like coastal erosion, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity. The region's coastal areas consist of freshwater and saline estuaries and reclaimed agricultural land. To address these issues, various strategies have been employed, including the restoration of Khazan lands (reclaimed mangroves) and the rehabilitation of St Inez Creek. In the case of the creek, community-led efforts have focused on preventing pollution and garbage, implementing waste recycling programs, and transforming the creek edge into a community garden. These initiatives have gained recognition and support, with stakeholders from the Panaji Smart City Mission actively involving local citizens' groups. The goal is to improve the health of the waterbody, enhance public health, and promote biodiversity by utilizing sensors, natural remediation, waste filtration, eco-friendly sanitation, and landscaping solutions. Additionally, the preparation of People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) in Goan villages aims to document traditional knowledge and practices related to local biological resources, facilitating informed decision-making and incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into urban and coastal landscape design.

Reference:

Gajjar, S. (2020). Nature-based Solutions to Climate Change in Coastal Cities.

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