Surat, Indore, Gorakphur among Rockefeller Foundation's 6-city climate project

Three Indian cities have been selected by the Rockefeller Foundation for funding from among six Asian cities on a pilot basis to prepare them to cope with the effects of climate change in the coming years, on an initial grant of $50 million.

The Rockefeller Foundation established the ''Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network'' project in 2007 with a $70-million fund following scientific predictions that people in major cities in Asia would be severely affected by global warming and climate change.

The six cities chosen for the first part of the project are Surat in Gujarat, Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Gorakphur in Uttar Pradesh, In India and Danang, Quy Nhon and Can Tho in Vietnam.

The foundation recognises that climate change has already occurred and the world will experience at least 90 more years of warming, regardless of measues now being undertaken, however important, to reduce future emissions.

This project aims to help urban communities prepare themselves to cope with the onslaught of the effects of climate change and global warming instead of preventing it and to ensure that planning includes the most vulnerable citizens.

The Rockefeller Foundation has allocated $50 million from the $70-million fund to start the pilot project in these six cities in initially, which will be extended to cities in Indonesia and Thailand and other Asian cities thereafter.

''Limiting future climate change is critical, but so is building resilience to the impact of climate change,'' says Ashvin Dayal, managing director of The Rockefeller Foundation's Asia Office.

Dayal says, ''Climate change must be integrated into poverty-reduction work, urban planning and development, public health and food security - all sectors where The Rockefeller Foundation has experience, expertise and networks.''

Work in the six cities will start immediately, with the foundation working in close coordination with local officials, meteorologists, technical experts and scientists working in the field of climate change and civic bodies to access and analyse the community's awareness, risk and vulnerabilities and then help build resilience-building projects.
The project includes building health systems to arrest the spread of dengue fever, infrastructure improvements to manage flooding and help communities to withstand and cope with extreme weather and rising seas.

The projects in these six cities will thereafter serve as a model for other cities like Indonesia and Thailand where it will also be soon implemented.

Existing grantees in the network include among others, Taru Leading Edge Pvt Ltd, which is a Hyderabad-based company involved in providing services in the areas of economic, social and institutional development and environmental sustainability.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, more than 60 per cent of the increase in the world's urban population in the next 30 years will occur in Asia, which already has a larger urban population than all other regions of the world combined.

In addition, a recent study of populations at risk to sea-level rise revealed that 8 of the top10 countries affected are in Asia.

Since building resilience requires action on multiple levels and scales, the Foundation expects to partner on the initiative with governments, other foundations and donors, NGOs and groups from the private sector.

People living in developing countries are 20 times more likely to be affected by climate-related disasters compared to those living in the industrialised world, and nearly two billion people in developing countries were affected by climate-related disasters in the 1990s alone.

And although the issue of global warming has received considerable attention recently, most of the focus has been on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

For millions of people, climate change will mean increased flooding; longer and more severe droughts; more frequent and devastating coastal storms; the spread of infectious diseases like dengue, malaria and cholera; increasing salinity of freshwater aquifers; and dramatic coastal erosion, all of which could result in loss of livelihoods, loss of homes, and loss of lives.

The estimates of how climate change will worsen conditions around the world are disturbing. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as many as 250 million people in Africa alone will face climate-induced water scarcity by 2020.

In South Asia, the 17 million people who live on sandbanks in Bangladesh's river basins could be homeless by 2030 as increasing Himalayan melt water floods their homes
Rockefeller Foundation, is also one of the sponsors for the Indian 'Sankalp Awardsfor entrepreneurs and corporates with a clear business model in agriculture and rural innovation, education, clean energy, healthcare, and other highly scalable social models.

The Rockefeller Foundation established by John D. Rockefeller, Sr, in 1913, works around the world to ensure that the benefits and opportunities of globalisation are spread more fully to more people in more places. With assets of more than $3.5 billion, it is one of the few institutions to conduct such work both within the US and internationally.
Since 2005, the Foundation has launched major initiatives to strengthen global health systems, mobilise an agricultural revolution in Africa, rebuild New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, fortify the economic security of American working families, and shape more sustainable transportation policies in the US, in addition to bolstering resilience to climate change in poor communities.