G20 delegates share best practices

Visakhapatnam: Former Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director-General of the National Environmental Agency, Singapore Ah Tuan Loh presented Singapore's principles and strategies for building inclusive, resilient and sustainable cities, including dynamic urban governance systems to achieve livability, integrated master planning and development, waste and water management, and environmental monitoring and education.

On the sidelines of the second G20 Infrastructure Working Group (IWG) meeting, he gave a presentation at the capacity building workshop organised jointly by the Indian G20 Presidency and Asian Development Bank for the G20 delegates in Visakhapatnam on Thursday.  Focusing on international best practices of urban infrastructure development and financing, the workshop highlighted the capacity prerequisites for local governments to finance urban infrastructure for inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities.

The session was followed by sharing South Korea's experience and challenges of urban development and financing and its initiative to disseminate knowledge globally. Inhee Kim, Director Seoul Institute, and Ga Hui Shin, Seoul Institute, presented and discussed specific challenges the city of Seoul faced and various redevelopment and restoration measures adopted to mitigate these challenges.

In the first half of the workshop, experts from Singapore, South Korea, Russia, China, European Commission and India presented the best practices being adopted in their countries for enhancing infrastructure financing for the cities. In the last session, delegates from China, Russia, European Commission and India presented specific case studies to highlight various measures adopted to increase the financing of urban infrastructure.

The workshop comprised classroom sessions and field visits to enable effective cross-learning. The field visit aimed at strengthening the understanding of innovative features of urban infrastructure projects and various financing schemes.

The classroom sessions were complemented by field visits to showcase three successful projects to display sustainable and inclusive water supply improvement with smart water management, Mudasarlova to highlight lake rejuvenation and 2 MW floating solar for strengthened climate resiliency, and Jindal Waste to Energy Plant to highlight private sector participation for effective solid waste management.

The workshop provided a unique opportunity for the delegates to learn from experiences and understand key elements of sustainability and resilience implemented across infrastructure projects. The G20 delegates appreciated the Indian Presidency's endeavour to enable practical learning to complement the discussions being held under the 2023 Infrastructure Agenda.