Abidjan Sustainable Urban Development Project
In 2016, Witteveen+Bos, in association with Delin Consult Limited, defined the initiatives to be funded in the Abidjan sustainable urban development project of Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). The project is part of the Sustainable Cities initiative of the GEF and supports the Global Platform Sustainable Cities, which is operated by the World Bank.
The main objective of the project was to enhance the local capacity to assess and respond to environmental degradation through the application of integrated sustainable urban planning and management tools, while at the same time encouraging the uptake of innovative lower carbon technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the air quality in the city of Abidjan. The local waste management system and the climate vulnerability of the city were also part of the scope. Witteveen+Bos and Delin Consult executed an assessment of the current situation of the city of Abidjan, proposed the project activities to be executed under the AfDB project and prepared the necessary project documents. The project focused of five components:
- Sustanable urban planning
- Assessing and improving air quality
- Sustainable urban infrastructure
- Waste management
- Knowledge management and replication activities.
Our integrated approach for this project included a climate vulnerability assessment, an air quality baseline analysis, a sustainable transportation assessment with a focus on non-motorised transport, an analysis of the current waste management system, among other things. Stakeholder engagement was also a key part of the project: many individual meetings with primary stakeholders (ministries and other parts of the Ivorian government) were conducted and two workshops with each over fifty participants were organised.