In an emerging country like India, the scale, speed and impact of urban and industrial development open up diverse opportunities to work in these areas. Everything is happening at a faster pace, on a bigger scale, resulting in an even more complex workload for government or municipal authorities and industrial managers. In the coming years, one can see a steep rise in the demand for everything. Resource tensions and constraints will reflect the increasing restraints in meeting these burgeoning demands. Increased competition in the national, regional and global market is also evident.

The Indian Government, the private sector, as well as technical cooperation agencies such as GIZ have to manage these developments to ensure resource efficiency and sustainable development. The Indo-German Environment Partnership (IGEP) programme has been designed to assist the Indian government in doing so. IGEP is a partnership programme between the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer International Zusammenarbeit, Government of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The IGEP Programme has an overall time horizon of up to six years (March 2012 to February 2018). The first phase of the programme has the duration of three years beginning 1 March 2012 to 28 February 2015.