Citizens to vote for the most loved cities in India

New Delhi: WWF-India launched the “We Love Cities” campaign, inviting citizens to vote for their ‘most loved city’ among the three shortlisted cities of Pune, Rajkot and Coimbatore. These three cities, alongside 43 other cities across the globe, have been profiled as a part of the We Love Cities (WLC) campaign, shortlisted on the basis of  demonstrated impressive sustainable actions towards creating climate-resilient places. In the wake of India’s release of its first list of smart cities, the campaign takes on special significance to further inspire people’s action on building climate-smart cities.
 
The We Love Cities campaign is a part of the larger Earth Hour City Challenge (EHCC) initiative of WWF launched in 2011.  We Love Cities is a digital campaign, inviting individuals across the world to show their support for cities that are going above and beyond to create a more sustainable, climate-friendly future. Launched across various social media channels, the campaign highlights the abundance and diversity of sustainable urban solutions, and mobilizes the public in support of those initiatives across the cities.

Rajkot, Pune and Coimbatore are the running contenders for both EHCC as well as WLC campaign in India. The three cities, which are also among the top 20 cleanest cities in India, have demonstrated strong low-carbon and aggressive renewable energy actions towards achieving sustainable initiatives.  Under the EHCC initiative, a successful green energy awareness programme was also organized in Pune early this week, in collaboration with Pune Municipal Corporation and ICLEI-South Asia. There were quizzes and competitions, green energy exhibits as well as interactive audio-visual activities for school children. The programme was attended by about 150 school kids along with city officials and general public.

The 46 global cities profiled in the We Love Cities campaign have been selected from the 126 cities that participated in WWF’s EHCC this year. A high level jury has been tasked to review the finalist cities, and based on the ambition level of their reported climate data, select one winner per participating country. WWF-India has worked closely with ICLEI – South Asia, in mobilizing cities to join the challenge and in enabling their reporting through the carbonn Climate Registry.

For the next eight weeks, people across the globe are invited to vote for their favourite cities on welovecities.org, and to share what they love about them through photos and videos on Twitter and Instagram with hashtag #welovecityname. People are also encouraged to submit suggestions as to what their cities can do to become more sustainable, which are also counted as a vote and shared with the respective cities. Balikpapan, Indonesia bagged the most loved city last year.

For further details please contact:  

Rituparna Sengupta                                  Sr. Manager- Brand, Media and Campaigns rsengupta@wwfindia.net 011-41504797

Divya Joy
Communications Officer – Climate Change
and Energy
djoy@wwfindia.net
011 - 41504823