VIJAYAWADA: A two-day workshop on 'climate investment planning' in Vijayawada organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), began at the Command Control Room of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) on Tuesday.
On day one, a delegation from University of Washington (UW) introduced an capital investment planning model, which provides a step-by-step process for energy auditing, carbon emission assessment and life-cycle cost analysis for VMC's select projects.
Sustainable Cities Integrated Approach Pilot (SCIAP) project is being by the UNIDO in close cooperation with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) with funding assistance from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Vijayawada, Guntur, Bhopal, Mysore and Jaipur.
Technical assistance on climate-smart capital budgeting to improve the creditworthiness of cities is one of the key activities supported under the SCIAP project in addition to the implementation of sustainability planning, investments in low carbon solutions to address municipal waste management, and enhancing the capacity and skills of city officials for effective implementation and management of projects in waste and sanitation sector.
UNIDO, in partnership with University of Washington (Seattle), is executing the capital budgeting exercise in Vijayawada and other project cities.
A delegation of Prof. Janice Whittington, Prof. Adrienne Greve from California State Polytechnic University, Sujatha Srikumar and UNIDO's Nand Pal Singh and Manasa Suresh and Ramana Rao conducted meetings and workshop with VMC officials and provided hands-on training to 25 officers from engineering, planning, and finance wings on Tuesday.
The UW team also demonstrated design strategies to reduce the impact of hazards for each project. The workshop also included discussions on screening projects for public-private partnerships.