Training And Handholding Support To District Ganga Committees For Preparation Of District Ganga Plans

The Ganga Basin provides a livelihood to more than 450 million people. Despite long lasting efforts to clean the Ganga and its tributaries, they remain polluted, overexploited, and disturbed in their environmental flows. The country’s governmental institutions have recognised the need to further scale holistic and integrated strategic approaches such as the integrated river basin management that address multiple pressure factors at the entire river basin. Yet, these have not yet fully translated into practical planning, coordination and steering mechanisms with the states being fully involved in the effort. 

The Namami Gange Programme was launched in 2014 by the Indian government to effectively reduce pollution and ensure the rejuvenation, protection, and sustainable management of the River Ganga and its tributaries. A key aspect of its implementation involves preparing river protection plans for all districts within the Ganga river basin. These plans, to be developed by the respective District Ganga Committees (DGCs), outline the necessary measures, estimated costs, and timelines for executing the proposed activities aimed at safeguarding the river ecosystem.

Building on the collaborative efforts since 2015, GIZ has been commissioned to implement the Phase III of the Support to Ganga Rejuvenation project financed by the BMZ. adelphi’s role in this project is to build capacities towards the preparation and evaluation of District Ganga Plans (DGPs). These capacities will be built in selected District Ganga Committees (DGCs) and a member resource pool of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and State Missions for Clean Ganga (SMCG). This is to be done through:

• four three-day trainings based on the existing DGP Handbook in 4 batches for selected DGCs and members of NMCG and SMCG
• handholding support during development and review of 40 DGPs at different stages during their preparation
• development of content for e-learning module contributing to scale up the DGP preparation across the whole Ganga basin