Connect Karo 2023: India must lead in sustainable development, say experts

G20 sherpa Amitabh Kant India as a country occupies just 1.3% of the total carbon space available in the world today

For future development amid the challenges posed by climate crisis, India must lead the world in the process of expanding industrialisation without carbonising, the country’s G20 sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Monday.

Connect Karo 2023: India must lead in sustainable development, say experts

Kant was addressing an event, Connect Karo 2023, organised by WRI India in New Delhi. Launching the two-day conference, he said, “India as a country occupies just 1.3% of the total carbon space available in the world today. But the way we will urbanise and industrialise in the future, we will become the third-largest carbon emitter in the world in due course. It is important that India as a country, both from the perspective of climate action and technology, leapfrogs and makes a substantial difference as far as action on climate front is concerned.”

WRI India, associated with the World Resources Institute, works with local and national governments, businesses, and civil society to address India’s development challenges through economically and environmentally sound solutions. Its two-day event Connect Karo 2023 is in its tenth year, and saw the participation of about 450 experts, policymakers, industry leaders and researchers to deliberate on sustainability solutions for India.

Under the theme, ‘For People, Nature, and Climate’, the first day of the conference saw the release of new research and 18 sessions on issues related to urban planning, water, and resilience, integrated and electric mobility, climate and clean air, energy, and food. Hindustan Times is the media partner for the event.

The sessions largely focused on sustainable urbanisation, decarbonising transport, and the need for a just and responsible energy transition.

Speaking at the event, Madhav Pai, CEO of WRI India, said, “We launched Connect Karo in 2013 with the aim to build a network of think tanks, private sector players, researchers, civil society, and the government to work together and find viable solutions that enable sustainable development in India. A decade on, it is heartening to find more than 450 participants join our discussions, seeking an evidence-based response to complex, sectoral issues and exploring nuanced, contextualized solutions to urgent challenges of our times.”

Pai highlighted that Connect Karo’s endeavour is to offer a platform for a high-level dialogue that will foster the building of sustainable, liveable cities of the future that place people at their centre.

“To shape connected, low-carbon and resilient cities, we must focus simultaneously on data-led urban planning and climate action, incorporating nature-based solutions and reimagining our food systems from production, storage and distribution to consumption practices,” he said.

Three working papers were also released on Monday, which included Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) in India, Improving Metro access in India and results from the engagement work of WRI India in Bengaluru since 2010. The PBS report presented findings from Mysuru, Bhopal and Pune, the first three Indian cities to have adopted PBS and highlighted the financial, business, and operating models created by them to implement the system. It studied the common factors that led to their initial success, and the challenges to sustaining and expanding them.

The Metro accessibility report surveyed over 7,200 metro commuters in Bengaluru, Delhi and Nagpur and laid out potential solutions to improve Metro train’s accessibility. The paper studied various commuter segments that use the metro in these cities, and their last-mile commute choices. A total of six publications are slated to release over Monday and Tuesday.

“A roundtable on ‘Unlocking financing to revolutionize electric bus adaption’ brought together transit agencies, automobile manufacturers, administrators, amongst other stakeholders to explore funding pathways for transit agencies that seek to take on electric buses. The panel on the upcoming National Urbanisation Policy (NUP) report, to be presented by WRI India to the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, saw inputs from an array of high-level speakers,” said a spokesperson from WRI India.

Another session discussed a recent WRI India report, ‘Urban Blue-Green Conundrum: A 10-City study on the Impacts of Urbanisation on Natural Infrastructure in India’, which looked at India’s most populated cities, between 2000 to 2015. It found that the built-up area in these cities has increased on average by 47% and 134% in core and periphery regions respectively, even as blue cover decreased by 15%.

Some of the other panel discussions included ‘Financing Clean Energy Transition for India’, ‘Expanding the Limits: Making the Clean Energy Growth Circular’, and ‘Vulnerability to Resilience: Fostering a Just Transition for MSMEs in India’.