Friday, November 18, 2022

MMR to get Climate Action Plan

When the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) was released, experts said it is not enough to simply have a climate plan for Mumbai city and suburbs alone, because pollution and climate do not respect administrative boundaries.

Now, seven months later, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is preparing a similar plan for the entire MMR. The aim is to assess the carrying capacity of the region which is poised for rapid development with mega projects such as the MTHL, the international airport, various Metro lines, the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, the Bullet Train, etc on the anvil.

The MMRDA will be working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to draft the MMR Climate Action Plan. The authority will then incorporate the study’s findings while planning various development projects as the growth has to sustainable. In a way, the MMR-CAP will be the sustainable planning document to guide the expansion of the MMR. 

Unlike the MCAP, which estimated the total carbon footprint of activities in two districts (Mumbai city and suburbs) measuring around 480 sq km, the MMR-CAP will measure the total ecological burden from various activities across an area of 6,328 sq km, consisting of eight other municipal corporations including Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi- Nizampur, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar and Panvel, in addition to several municipal councils and over 1,000 villages in Thane, Raigad and Palghar.

The MMR-CAP will not have a ‘net zero’ target on the lines of the MCAP, which ambitiously aims to make Mumbai a carbon neutral city by 2050, twenty years ahead of India’s nationally determined target. 

The MCAP marked the first-ever stock-taking of Mumbai’s emissions by a government body and estimated the city’s total emissions in 2019 to be 34.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2Eq) greenhouse gases. A staggering 71% of this load can be attributed to the energy sector, followed by transportation which contributed 24%. The remaining 5% was attributed to the waste sector.

However, as the MCAP itself reveals, a truly net zero carbon balance for the city is virtually impossible within this time frame.


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Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Rejuvenating Mumbai’s rivers

A long-pending recommendation of the Chitale committee which probed the Mumbai deluge of July 26, 2005 -- rejuvenation of the Dahisar and Poisar rivers – will finally be carried out by the BMC.

This includes widening and dredging the rivers, removal and rehabilitation of 200 slums on their banks and construction of `nullah’ interceptors to stop industrial effluents, sewage and untreated waste from entering the rivers. The project will collectively cost Rs 1,438 crore and take three years. 

The two rivers which originate from Tulsi Lake in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park are no better than sewers today. Incidentally, the Chitale committee had remarked that the BMC, in its development plan, had deliberately referred to these rivers as “nullahs” to keep them out of the purview of river laws.

This river rejuvenation project is also a part of the BMC’s Brihanmumbai Storm Water Disposal (Brimstowad) project, launched in 2005 to prevent floods. Under this project, the civic body had planned to augment drainage, construct new drains and widen and desilt nullahs to increase their capacity.

The sewerage treatment plant (STP) installed for the Poisar river at 10 locations will have the capacity to treat 33.50 MLD of sewerage on a daily basis. The Dahisar river STP, set up at two locations, will have a capacity to treat 6.5 MLD.

The project also envisages a 3,153-metre-long service road along the banks of Poisar river and a 1,165-metre-long service road along the Dahisar river as well as roadside drains.



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Sunday, November 13, 2022

Mission to eradicate TB by 2025

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is on a mission to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) completely by 2025 under the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Yojana. According to the BMC’s recently clocked in figures, there are 40,000 TB patients undergoing treatment in Mumbai.

If BMC manages to accomplish this in time, this will still be five years earlier than the United Nation’s 2030 target.

According to The India TB Report 2022, the country experienced a 19% increase in tuberculosis cases in 2021 compared to the previous year. This is because the pandemic disrupted their treatment. 

The BMC has urged citizens to contribute to the fight against TB by adopting patients under the Nikshay Mitra scheme and taking care of their nutritional and medical requirements. 

Nikshay Mitras provide dry ration kits to patients for six months to three years. The kit costing Rs 500-900 a month comprises items like oil, cereal, pulses and jiggery as nutrition plays a huge role in combating the disease at an early stage.

Anyone can register on a digital portal that the government has developed through a public-private partnership. The goal is to reduce stigma around TB diseases, which can only be accomplished with community support, better care, and adoption of TB patients. So far, there are 7,000 Nikshay Mitras in Mumbai.

According to Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC’s executive health officer, 31,000 out of 40,000 patients have consented to get support from donors. 

Nikshay Mitras can also finance diagnostic to help in diagnosis of TB, blood investigations, MRI, CT scan and other investigations.

These donors can also provide vocational help by in the way jobs or even help family members of patients from lower income groups. It is not just the patient, the entire family fights TB. Treatment goes on for one to two years and the whole family goes through hurdles. This is where Nikshay Mitras come in.


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Thursday, November 10, 2022

Global firms bid for Dharavi redevelopment

The plan to transform India’s largest slum into a plush township has got off to a fresh start with the Shinde-Fadnavis government calling a global tender for the redevelopment project on October 1. With a population close to a million, Dharavi, which is bang in the middle of the city, is equivalent to a municipal corporation of class one size. Besides, it has thousands of tanning factories and informal recycling industries.

Although the last date for the submission of bids is October 31, eight companies, including some from the Middle East, and South Korea, have participated in the Dharavi Redevelopment pre-bid meeting tendering process.

The project was first proposed by the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government led by Devendra Fadnavis and two companies – Adani Group and Dubai’s Sec-Link Group – had shown interest in it. The redevelopment of the 259 hectares is pegged at Rs 20,000 crore.

The state government has come out with a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) model for the project. This, experts says, gives a lot of credibility and a lot of risk mitigation to the project and at the same time it gives freedom and flexibility in the execution. The majority stakeholder will be from the private sector for that the government will give them open competitive bidding based on a pricing mechanism in the market.


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