India: Supporting urban management reforms in Bihar

SPUR is a six-year technical assistance programme designed to accelerate economic growth and poverty reduction in the Indian state of Bihar— one of the poorest in India. The programme has been designed to enhance the ability of major towns and cities— through their urban local bodies (ULBs) — to provide services such as clean water supply, improved sanitation, sewage treatment and solid waste management.

The project design is based on institutional restructuring within ULBs and the development of management, financial and technical systems. Project implementation has been planned thematically across the areas of urban governance and planning, municipal finance, municipal infrastructure, local economic development and social development, poverty, and livelihoods.

It is expected that around six million people will benefit directly. IMC was asked to focus on mainstreaming the environment, climate change and disaster risk management within SPUR.

Following preliminary field visits in March-April 2010 and meetings with the SPUR project management team, UK Department for International Development, theme leaders, cluster teams and some selected government departments in Bihar the Climate Change Specialist and Environmentalist redefined the approach to and scope of, ECC within SPUR.

An ‘action plan’ was developed to support urban local bodies to deal with environment, climate change and disaster risk issues.

This included:

• integrating ECC within City Development Plans (CDPs)
• developing transformational opportunities and pilot programmes within the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)
• catalysing state-level policy, sector-wide plans and technical standards that may be useful in mainstreaming ECC