The Union Cabinet chaired by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has approved the City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain 2.0 (CITIIS 2.0).  CITIIS 2.0 is a program conceived by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in partnership with the French Development Agency (AFD), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the European Union (EU), and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). The program will run for a period of four years, i.e., from 2023 till 2027.

The program envisages to support competitively selected projects promoting circular economy with focus on integrated waste management at the city level, climate-oriented reform actions at the State level, and institutional strengthening and knowledge dissemination at the National level.

The funding for CITIIS 2.0 would include a loan of Rs.1760 crore (EUR 200 million) from AFD and KfW (EUR 100 million each) and a technical assistance grant of Rs.106 cr. (EUR 12 million) from the EU.

CITIIS 2.0 aims to leverage and scale up the learnings and successes of CITIIS 1.0. CITIIS 1.0 was launched jointly in 2018 by MoHUA, AFD, EU, and NIUA, with a total outlay of ₹933 crore (EUR 106 million). CITIIS 1.0 consisted of three components:

Component 1: 12 city-level projects selected through a competitive process.

Component 2:   Capacity-development activities in the State of Odisha.

Component 3:   Promoting integrated urban management at the national level through activities undertaken by NIUA, which was the Program Management Unit (PMU) for CITIIS 1.0

Technical assistance was made available under the program at all three levels through domestic experts, international experts, and transversal experts. It has resulted in the mainstreaming of innovative, integrated and sustainable urban development practices through a unique challenge-driven financing model based on the principles of competitive and cooperative federalism.

Following the CITIIS 1.0 model, CITIIS 2.0 has three major components:

Component 1:   Financial and technical support for developing projects focused on building climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation in up to 18 smart cities through selection of competitively selected projects promoting circular economy with focus on integrated waste management.

Component 2:   All States and UTs will be eligible for support on demand basis. The States will be provided support to (a) set-up/strengthen their existing State climate centres/ Climate cells/ equivalents (b) create State and city level Climate Data Observatories (c) facilitate climate-data driven planning, develop climate action plans and (d) build capacities of municipal functionaries. To achieve these objectives, the PMU at NIUA will coordinate provision of technical assistance and strategic support to State Governments.

Component 3:   Interventions at all three levels; Centre, State and City to further climate governance in urban India through institutional strengthening, knowledge dissemination, partnerships, building capacity, research and development to support scale up across all States and Cities.

CITIIS 2.0 will supplement the climate actions of Government of India through its ongoing National programs (National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, AMRUT 2.0, Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 and Smart Cities Mission), as well as contributing positively to India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and Conference of the Parties (COP26) commitments.

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DS