The research project “Sustainable Solid Waste Management” focuses on the Solid waste sector in the context of city climate action plans. Addressing the triple challenge of Urbanization, fractured urban governance, and climate change through the climate action plans. Chennai City’s climate action plan is taken as a case example to contextualize and understand climate action planning in the Indian context. Our team, consisting of four individuals, analyzed the Chennai City Climate Action Plan as a case study. Each member of the group was assigned to one of the three primary sectors, transport, energy, and waste, with one member tasked with examining the overarching methodology. This document primarily centers on the Solid Waste sector of the Climate Action Plan.
The project began by reviewing the literature, Case studies, and global best practices to analyze the technical, financial, institutional structure, and governance elements of the Climate Action Plan. Subsequently, a framework was devised to evaluate the waste sector in city climate action plans. The Chennai City Climate Action Plan was then evaluated using this framework to identify areas where the draft climate action plan could be improved under the categories of technical, public participation, implementation, and monitoring. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the draft Chennai City Climate Action Plan, identifying gaps and developing a set of recommendations at each stage of solid waste management from generation, segregation, collection and transportation, processing, and finally disposal, and recommendations for Implementation and Monitoring which includes a financial mechanism, institutional structure, and public participation. The report provides additional recommendations for the state of Tamil Nadu, and at the National level, with the aim of helping to achieve the global target of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C.

The research project is divided into two broad phases to achieve the objectives, where the first objective is to create a framework which can be applied to assess the proposed Chennai climate action plan which is in draft stage, the first phase includes sector specific literature study, reviewing different case studies and best practices, which will help in understanding the gaps and overlaps in the waste sector, and identification of project strategies, risk assessments, responsible stakeholders, institutional structure and financing mechanism. With the understanding from the first phase, framework would be created to assess the waste sector within a climate action plan. Waste sector in Chennai climate action plan would be assessed on the basis of the framework, where gaps would be identified in existing and proposed actions at different stages in the solid waste management in the city. Stakeholder consultation, with respective people responsible for solid waste management, development of the climate action plan, research, implementation, and execution bodies would help in understanding their perspectives, as well as on ground reality about the gaps found earlier. The second objective to find the scope for improvement in the Chennai climate action plan which would be build upon from the gaps identified, stakeholder consultation and prior literature review and frame recommendations which can be incorporated at different stages in the Climate Action Plan.

To understand the waste sector in the climate agenda, the solid waste management process involving seven steps generation, segregation, collection, transportation, processing, disposal, implementation of the solid waste management plan and monitoring was assessed under two heads the impact of climate on waste management and impact of waste sector on climate.

Framework developed to evaluate the Chennai climate action plan, drawing from a review of literature, case studies, and best practices. The framework is organized into different categories, including an analysis of the city's climate conditions and external factors, baseline emissions, institutional structure, financing, and technical aspects of the solid waste management process from generation to disposal. The solid waste management network and climatic impacts are assessed with respect to existing strategies in place at National and State Level and the strategies proposed in the Chennai Climate Action Plan, to find the scope for improvement. Gaps were identified in the process at different stages of solid waste management process, Institutional and governance structure, financial mechanism and public participation from the framework which was further refined after the stakeholder consultation which helped us understand the process in depth, from the perspective of various government stakeholders involved, research partners and the department involved in preparation of the climate action plan itself.

Recommendations: The research project provides recommendations in three sections to enhance the solid waste sector in Indian cities' climate action plans. These recommendations are developed based on the analysis of literature review, case studies, best practices, site visits, and stakeholder consultations. The three sections of recommendations include suggestions for Chennai, recommendations for cities in Tamil Nadu, and proposals for India. Brief of recommendations • Monitoring of the implementation and execution of the mandates given within the Municipal Solid Waste Management Manual at the ward level by incorporating Civil society organizations in the process and ward-level supervisors. • Information waste dashboard ward level - Developing a mechanism for Monitoring and tracking the entire solid waste chain and maintaining a database to monitor generation, segregation, collection, processing, and disposal. • The solid waste management process should be resilient to extreme weather events such as floods, the processing units are not to be situated in flood- prone zones. alternative transportation modes and shouldn’t solely rely on EVs for the transportation of Waste. 23 • Land allocation in spatial plans at the ward level for Decentralized waste management and safe disposal of waste at the city level. • Incorporation of International Funding, Integration between, the National, State, and city-level funds, Innovative funding mechanisms such as carbon credits, and green bonds should be utilized. • Project-based solutions need to be channelized, along with empirical evidence of goal setting for emission reduction. Intermediate goal setting for each category of waste. Way Forward Each city faces its own distinct challenges; therefore, climate action plans should be adaptable and customized to meet the specific needs of the city. By creating detailed frameworks for each sector within the broader global structure, tangible positive results can be achieved, improving the resilience of cities and contributing to worldwide efforts to combat climate change.