National Mission on Sustainable India / National Water Mission

National Mission on Sustainable India

A national Mission on Sustainable India will be launched to make habitat sustainable through improvements in energy efficiency in buildings, management of solid waste and modal shift to public transport. The mission will promote energy efficiency as an integral component of urban planning and urban renewal through three initiatives.

·         The energy Conservation Building  Code which addresses the design of new and large commercial buildings to optimize their energy demand , will be extended in its application and incentives provided for retooling existing building stock.

·         Recycling of material and urban waste management will be a major component of ecologically sustainable economic development. The National Mission will include a major R & D programme, focusing on bio-chemical conversion, waste water use, sewage utilization and recycling options wherever possible.

·         Better urban planning and modal shift to public transport- making long term transport plans will facilitate the growth of medium and small cities in ways that ensure efficient and convenient public transport.

In addition, the mission will address the need to adapt to future climate change by improving the resilience of infrastructure, community based disaster management and measures for improving the warning system for extreme weather events. Capacity building would be an important component of this mission.

National Water Mission-

The National Water Mission is to ensure integrated water resource management helping to conserve water, minimize wastage and ensure more equitable distribution both across and within states.

The mission will take into account the provisions of the National Water Policy and develop a framework to optimize water use by increasing water use efficiency by 20% through regulatory mechanisms with differential entitlements and pricing.

It will seek to ensure that a considerable share of the water needs of urban areas are met through recycling of waste water, and ensuring that the water requirements of coastal cities with inadequate alternatives sources of water are met through adoption of new and appropriate technologies such as low temperature desalination technologies that allow for use Ocean water.

The National Water Policy is to be revisited in consultation with states to ensure basin level management strategies to deal with variability in rainfall and river flows due to climate change. This will include enhanced storage both above and below ground rainwater harvesting, coupled with equitable storage both above and below ground rainwater harvesting coupled with equitable and efficient management structures.

The mission will seek to develop new regulatory structures, combined with appropriate entitlements and pricing. It will seek to optimize the efficiency of existing irrigation systems. Including rehabilitation of systems that have been run down and also expand irrigation, where feasible, with special effort to increase the storage capacity. Incentive structures will be designed t promote wate-neutal or large scale irrigation programmes which rely on sprinklers drip irrigation and ridge and furrow irrigation.