Rajkot wins global climate change challenge third time

Rajkot: Saurashtra’s commercial capital Rajkot has once again pipped other Indian cities to bag the prestigious title of ‘National Capital of India 2019-20’ bestowed by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) for efforts taken to reduce carbon dioxide emission and tackling climate change.
WWF, the international organization that is championing the cause of reducing human impact on the environment, picked Rajkot above cities like Nagpur, Kochi, Panaji, Pune, Guwahati, Gangtok and even Indore, which had been voted India’s cleanest cities earlier.
In the year 2019-20, Rajkot has reduced conventional energy consumption by 17.26 million kilo watt hour (KWH) and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 14,000 tonnes, by embracing solar in a big way and other projects. In fact, Rajkot has won his title three times now - in 2016-17, 2018-19 and 2019-20.
The cities had participated in the ‘One Planet City Challenge (OPCC), a global competition in which 255 cities from 53 countries had participated to demonstrate their innovations in sectors like energy, transport, housing, waste-to-power taken to reduce carbon emission.
Municipal commissioner Udit Agrawal told TOI, “The OPCC international jury of experts had met in March and April to select one city from each country as the national winner and global winner. Kochi and Nagpur were also selected as finalists and Rajkot emerged as national winner for India.”
In its observations, the jury noted: Rajkot is implementing an ambitious energy efficiency project and is taking important action to mitigate water scarcity risks, including measures to reuse and recycle waste water. Rajkot is further tackling storm water flooding risks by restoring nature-based drainage solutions, with important filtration and health co-benefits. The city's mitigation actions focused on its highest emitting sectors, most notably in the buildings sector.”
“Rajkot demonstrated several actions across at least three identified hazards and scored well on political commitment indicators,” WWF’s letter to Agrawal stated.