West Bengal Inland Water Transport, Logistics and Spatial Development Project
The proposed Project has drawn on international best practices such as “working with nature”.
The proposed Project has drawn on international best practices such as “working with nature”.
The project will have an important components on using NbS for erosion, flood risk reduction, and landslide control. This will largely include increasing green spaces, revegeation, and use of microretention areas.
Investments will include a variety of green infrastructure measures, sustainable and climate-smart agricultural practices, and livelihoods diversification. Green infrastructure will be designed in conjunction with gray infrastructure to optimize the functionality, cost-effectiveness, and resilience of the integrated natural and built system.
The project used farmer-led natural regeneration, which is mostly to create food forests, but also improve forest cover to reduce water runoff and maximizing rain infiltration (and protection from wind).
The project will use green infrastructure, such as green roofs and green spaces to reduce energy consumption, but also reduce flooding.
This component focuses on incorporating innovative technologies in community-based sustainable NRM. Subcomponents include (a) addressing climate change impacts on water resources and agriculture by promoting innovative climate-smart NRM technologies and (b) alleviating negative impacts of environmental degradation and climate change on livelihoods.
The project will support the design nd pilot implementation of the Community Adaptation Fund (CAF) in the Gicumbi District. This includes piloting landscape restoration in the Gicumbi District through the CAF on investments such as catchment restoration and rehabilitation through reforestation, silvo-pastoralism and other watershed protection measures that have demonstrated community resilience to climate change. The project will also support the development of flagship programs such as Water Security for All Flagship Program.
The project has been restructured to include nature-based solutions, which aligns with their NDC ambitions. They will use NBS relating to forests, conservation, and other to meet PDO. The work will be implemented by the National Disaster Risk Management Fund. It will also have community resilience component.
The project will fill critical infrastructure gaps in the Integrated Transport Network Development Plan (“ITNDP”) demonstrating use of innovative, climate-informed, safe, and nature-based solutions. It will also invest in innovative, climate resilient, nature-based design and construction solutions for roads and bridges, least-cost-engineering solutions for local infrastructure.
The measures to be integrated in the designs of bridges, roads and river crossings include bioengineering solutions for landslide and erosion protection, drainage systems, and so on. The resilience mainstreaming applies to the entire road under the upgradation works contract, as the road alignment falls in the midst of the Himalayan mountains. The bioengineering solutions and drainage improvement in slide risk locations apply to the roads under maintenance as well.