City-to-City pairings

City-to-city pairings

Through the IUC programme, cities and regions across Europe have entered into partnerships on sustainable development with counterparts from around the globe. For a full list of city pairings so far, see the table below:

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Country
EU City
Link
Paired city
Country

Rotterdam

Surat

Pixabay

Population

651 446

Area

325.8 km2

Mayor

Ahmed Aboutaleb


Sagarpanchal01 [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia C

Population

7 185 000

Area

326.5 km2

Mayor

Dr. Jagdish Patel


Topics

Climate adaptationWater, waste management and sanitation

Sustainable Development Goals

Description

Rotterdam and Surat were officially paired as part of the IUC programme in 2017, but have been collaborating since 2015. The cities are focusing their IUC partnership on tackling issues related to water management, such as ensuring the quality of drinking water, mitigating water pollution from industrial run-off, protecting against flooding, and effectively treating sewage.

Implementation

As part of their collaboration, Rotterdam is sharing their experience of managing water in their own city, with a particular focus on how to link water management aims to other sustainable development goals. 

For Rotterdam, the key word in approaching the issues raised by water management is "integration" - linking challenges rather than dealing with them in isolation to achieve the best results.

For their part, Surat has inspired the Dutch city to scale up their climate resilience and adaptation activities. A series of study visits as well as regular exchange via phone has allowed the two cities to get to know each other and to establish a successful working mode.

In Rotterdam, Surat has found a knowledgeable partner with a wealth of water management experience. In Surat, Rotterdam has found a city dealing with issues on a much larger scale, which has already inspired the Dutch city to think differently about the challenges they face.

News

The team from Rotterdam has visited Surat to assess the water supply scenario in the city and extent of knowledge exchange between Rotterdam and Surat under European Union’s International Urban Cooperation program

The team of experts from Rotterdam visited Surat city during 11-15 March, 2019 and reviewed various facilities available in the city. They have visited number of places during a week-long visit along with some Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) officials. The team v ...

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Surat and Rotterdam cooperate to meet urban water challenges

The Municipality of Rotterdam (The Netherlands) will work together with Surat Municipal Corporation (India) on urban water management as part of their IUC programme cooperation, focusing on flood risk management, urban drainage and wastewater management.
With the aid of Rotterdam, Surat will soon apply new flood forecasting and water quantity monitoring models, improve water quality monitoring procedures, and i ...

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Six more cities in the Indian State of Gujarat commit to the GCoM

At the first India-European Union Forum, which took place 17-18 September 2019 in New Dehli, six more cities from the State of Gujarat in Western India became signatories to the Global Covenant of Mayors.These cities – namely, Ahemadabad, Vadodara, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Gandhinagar and Junagadh – join the municipalities of Surat and Rajkot, which signed the GCoM when it was launched in South Asia in May 2 ...

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Rotterdam delegation shares approach to water management during Surat visit


Within the framework of the IUC programme and in cooperation with the 100 Resilient Cities initiative, a delegation of five Rotterdam City representatives led by Mr. Arnoud Molenaar, Chief Resilience Officer, and Mr. Henk Ketelaars from the Rotterdam drinking water company Evides, visited the City of Surat (India) from 11 - 15 March. The Dutch delegation shared best practices on water and climate ...

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