Mr. Emani Kumar, Executive Director, ICLEI South Asia participated as a panelist at the Resilient Cities 2018 that was held from the 26th to 28th of April, 2018 in Bonn, Germany. The congress was organised by ICLEI World Secretariat. The focus of the 9th Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation was on the Talanoa Dialogue for climate ambition this year.

Mr. Kumar presented on Integrated Rural Urban Water Management for Climate based Adaptations in Indian Cities (IAdapt) in the session called Planning for urban resilience: co-development of solutions for transformative impacts.

He introduced the IAdapt project, funded by International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and explained the goals and objectives to the participants.

The project aims to institutionalise climate change adaptation measures through the creation of an enabling ecosystem within cities to adopt and implement IUWM approaches at a city level and an approach towards IWRM at catchment level guided by participatory catchment planning, simple decision support tools, preparation of catchment level action plans and multipronged financing approaches. The project cities are Solapur, Maharashtra, Vijayawada, and Andhra Pradesh.

Mr. Kumar explained that the project is in progress and activities like focus group discussions, quadrat studies in the micro-catchments around each city, SWOT analysis for delineation of micro-catchments around both the cities, preliminary hydrological and climate modelling, identification of vulnerable micro-catchment around each city, review of existing IUWM toolkits, and development of IAdapt Framework have been done.

As a next step, meetings with State, District and City Governments, formation of RURBAN Platforms, formation of Project Advisory Board, development of Decision Support Tool, development of Catchment Management Plan, pilot project selection and implementation is planned.

The session, as a whole, explored urban planning informed by policy-relevant research and local experience, which is only possible with collaboration and partnerships amongst various stakeholders from the public, community to private sectors. Engaging research-into-use approaches, through relevant multi-stakeholder participation in the planning process, have been proven to generate stronger climate resilient solutions and a more systemic impact.
  
Panelists highlighted research results from diverse cities with the goal of understanding how their research is contributing, to improve urban governance and resilience. The session also explored the key enablers and barriers to co-developing solutions in the Global South.

From this session, the participants learned about the methods for adapting urban management in different urban environments involving various stakeholders. They also gained a better understanding of strategies for working with city governments to respond to the changing dynamics of resilient urban development in the context of climate change.