For climate action, collaborate

IN PERSPECTIVE

As climate change events intensify and global calls for climate action get louder, cities across India are evolving climate action plans, resilience action plans, and other similar ‘action plans’ to deal with climate risks. But how much of the “action” in these plans is really transpiring on the ground, or more importantly, emanating from the city’s messy realities? Are these new plans merely echoing the top-down approach of the Indian urban planning paradigm, which has infamously aided and abetted social as well as spatial inequalities? These questions assume heightened criticality in reforming and redirecting the climate (and urban) planning model in the country, an imperative that has recently been acknowledged by the Niti Ayog in its 2021 report titled “Reforms in Urban Planning Capacity in India.”

City-scale climate action plans are nestled within the Smart Cities Mission. In 2019, the Ministry launched its ‘Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework’ (CSCAF), which supports cities in assessing their ‘climate smartness.’ An important criterion is having a city Climate Action Plan (CAP). While this perhaps explains, among other factors, the recent spurt in climate action plans, planning for climate action in urban India predates the CSCAF.

From the early 2000s, Indian cities began to enrol (and continue to do so) as members of international climate action networks promoted by a global assemblage of development agencies, banks, and philanthropic organisations, which have been directing and funding climate planning and action in response to the unprecedented high-impact climate extremes. All these have their own frameworks/guidelines that guide member cities in preparing their climate action plans.

Irrespective of the framework that cities choose to evolve their plans, the approach is largely top-down and entails (1) the creation of GHG inventories and attendant emission reduction targets and strategies, and (2) vulnerability/risk assessments. While the former is a much-needed climate change mitigation effort, the vulnerability/risk assessments component misses the opportunity to evolve into an inclusive bottom-up effort by not elaborating on the how, who, and what of these assessments.

As a result, ‘participation’ is limited to tokenistic mentions, and climate action plans end up capturing neither the local knowledge nor the experiences of communities. Additionally, the community’s role in co-producing contextually suited solutions is yet to be explored in these action plans.

While some frameworks (like the C40 framework) mandate active engagement with vulnerable communities, the modality of this engagement is unclear. For instance, the Mumbai CAP (based on the C40 framework) proposes a ward-level comprehensive socio-economic vulnerability assessment to ensure the implementation of appropriate solutions to adapt to heat stress and flooding risks. While an acknowledgement of such an assessment at the sub-city scale is a good starting point, there is a lack of clarity on how these assessments will be done and attendant strategies implemented. In the absence of this clarity, climate action will follow in the footsteps of failed Indian urban planning rhetoric—removed and disconnected from ground realities.

Both policy and action provide entry points for evolving from the ground up and inclusive CAPs.On policy, the National Disaster Management Act (NDMA) guidelines of 2010 emphasise the complementarity of top-down and bottom-up approaches in preparing disaster management plans. Such an approach will allow the vulnerable to express their needs and ensure their integration into the plans.

Similarly, on action, the void created by the limited outreach of the formal/State-led climate and urban plans that often invisibilise the poor and marginalised, is occupied by non-State stakeholders (like NGOs, CBOs). Much of this engagement is reactive, limited in scale and does not always align with the formal plans. Acknowledging and integrating these on-ground efforts collaboratively is a way forward to making the climate and urban plans inclusive and grounded.

Furthermore, city climate action plans are being developed in isolation from the one statutory and dominant planning tool that steers urban growth in Indian cities—the Master / Development Plan. For instance, the Mumbai CAP, released in March 2022, is yet to move into action (whatever that ‘action’ might mean). In the absence of statutory backing, political interests and turmoil can dictate how or if such a plan actualises on the ground.

So far, climate action planning echoes the tried, but failed top-down approach; it must adopt an inclusive and bottom-up process available in the NDMA guidelines and existing efforts by non-State actors. Coalescing these with GHG reduction planning through collaborations is a critical task that climate action plans need to focus on.

(The writers are urban planners with Integrated
Design, Bengaluru.)