Cities contribute to 80% of the economic growth. Unfortunately, they also account for 60% to 80% of energy consumption, 75% of carbon emissions and consume over 75% of the world’s natural resources. India is also witnessing rapid urbanisation, with approximately 31% of its population living in cities. Currently, much of the urbanisation is taking place in small towns and cities. The rapidly urbanising trajectory requires us to find a way of achieving economically and socially equitable growth, without further damaging the environment. This has, thus, been long debated and now agreed that the current and future social, environmental and economic challenges are interlinked and therefore it needs a holistic approach for sustainable development. The current social and economic paradigm has contributed to mismanagement of resources across the globe.

DA has been conducting policy research on urbanisation by looking at the sufficient and efficient resource management within cities. With a low success rate of the Millennium Development Goals, the world agreed to work towards more robust and integrated targets. We have been actively engaged in this space in the form of research studies, stakeholder engagement and organisation of capacity building workshops on life-cycle assessment of sustainable affordable housing, urban water management, municipal solid waste management and construction and demolition waste management within cities.