River City Alliance

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Context

• Recently, the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) signed a Memorandum of Common Purpose (MoCP) with the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI), representing 124 cities/towns along the Mississippi River in the United States.

About River City Alliance (RCA)

• The RCA is a cooperative effort of the Ministries of Jal Shakti (MoJS) and Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), to connect river cities and focus on sustainable river development.
• The Alliance focuses on three primary themes: networking, capacity building, and technical support.
• The Alliance began with 30 member cities in November 2021 and has since grown to 110 river cities across India and one overseas member city from Denmark.

Objective

• The RCA aspires to encourage online knowledge sharing for Indian cities interested in learning innovative methods and approaches to urban river management.
• It would also provide international cities with the opportunity to learn about experiences in Indian cities that may apply to their situations.

Significance

• It will allow cities to learn from each other's achievements and failures while also connecting people to rivers.
• It has the potential to play a critical role in connecting communities with their rivers, and it can serve as a model for all cities in the Basin and beyond.
• It will provide an opportunity for municipal administrators and their staff to adopt innovative initiatives while learning and inspiring one another.
• It allows towns to increase governance features for river cities and improves their liveability to attract external economic investments, access state-of-the-art knowledge and frameworks, and serve as the location for unique demonstration projects.

Suggestions

• Cities should be in charge of revitalizing their rivers.
• It must be done with a developmental and facilitative perspective as well as a regulatory mindset.
• There is a need for a framework for integrating urban built form, landscape, and the urban water cycle.
• Cities have been regarded as substantially responsible for the deterioration of rivers and will thus need to play an important role in rejuvenation initiatives as well.
• There is a need to include river-sensitive practices in urban development.

Related Initiatives

• Namami Gange Programme: It is an Integrated Conservation Mission to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution and conservation and rejuvenation of the National River Ganga.
• Ganga Action Plan: It was the first River Action Plan that was taken up by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 1985, to improve the water quality through the interception, diversion, and treatment of domestic sewage.
• National River Ganga Basin Authority (NRGBA): It was formed by the Government of India in the year 2009 under Section 3 of the Environment Protection Act, 1986.
• Clean Ganga Fund: In 2014, it was formed to clean up the Ganga, set up waste treatment plants, and conservation of biotic diversity of the river.
• Bhuvan-Ganga Web App: It ensures the involvement of the public in monitoring of pollution entering into the river Ganga.
• Ban on Waste Disposal: In 2017, the National Green Tribunal banned the disposal of any waste in the Ganga.

PRACTICE QUESTION Consider the following statements about River Cities Alliance: It is a first-of-its-kind Alliance in the world, symbolizing the Ministry of Jal Shakti's and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs' excellent collaboration. The Alliance's Secretariat is based at the Department of Water Resources and River Development. It focuses on three key themes: networking, capacity building, and technical support. How many of the statements given above are correct? A) Only one B) Only two C) All three D) None Answer: B