India and the World Bank on Thursday agreed to further strengthen their partnership to advance India’s green-growth agenda.

During their meeting, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and World Bank President Robert B Zoellick discussed the Government’s vision for a strong and sustainable development agenda.

“The partnership between the World Bank and the Government of India will support programs that help India maintain high growth as a primary objective, while also either building climate resilience or promoting clean energy solutions, consistent with India’s 11th Five Year Plan,” said a World Bank release in New Delhi.

This includes projects that build fuel-efficient transport infrastructure, clean energy hydropower plants, efficient water supply and wastewater systems, as well as programmes that help farmers, fishing communities and people in other vulnerable communities safeguard their livelihoods against the vagaries of a changing climate, it said.

The government is clear about the need to reflect and factor in ecological concerns into the growth process so that its benefits can be achieved without critically straining the environment, Ramesh said after his meeting with the World Bank chief.

“Our projects supported by the World Bank specifically address our most compelling environmental concerns, including river cleaning and conserving our biodiversity. We are also working at strengthening our environmental regulators as a probable area of future engagement,” he said.

The Government is focusing efforts on applying rigorous environmental safeguards for infrastructure projects, strengthening the environmental governance system, revitalizing regulatory institutions, investing in air and water quality improvements and addressing the challenge of climate change on an ongoing basis, he said.

Applauding the Government’s efforts, Zoellick said, India is working to integrate its growth objectives and need to overcome poverty with the sustainability of natural resources and the well-being of future generations.

The proposed project to strengthen the capacity of the Pollution Control Boards will help build their skills and infrastructure, ensure their financial sustainability and set up new monitoring and data management mechanisms, the World Bank statement said.
The proposed biodiversity project will seek to demonstrate conservation measures in various ecosystems, catalogue Indias rich biodiversity in hotspots, and support livelihoods of communities living within biodiversity-rich areas and enable them to benefit from investments in these areas, it said.

As India accelerates its response to the environment challenges that face its growing economy, the World Bank too has stepped up its financial support for the government’s various environment management and protection programmes.

The Bank has already given its financial support for three environment management and protection projects which include Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project, Industrial Pollution Management Project and the National Ganga Project with $220 million, $65 million and $20 million help respectively.