India’s climate action needs a local thrust

The NAP holds promise, but it must also institutionalise non-state efforts, especially grassroots action.

With the COP30 on the horizon, ongoing efforts worldwide are seeking to propel climate discourse and policy on the local, sub-national, and national levels. In line with its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submitted in 2023, India is evolving its first National Adaptation Plan (NAP) as part of the ongoing Green Climate Fund Readiness Programme.

A comprehensive roadmap to building climate resilience through an integration of climate-change adaptation into relevant policies and development plans, the NAP seeks to identify adaptation priorities and regional vulnerabilities across nine key sectors: water, agriculture, disaster management and infrastructure resilience, health, forests, ecosystems and biodiversity, poverty alleviation and livelihoods, traditional knowledge and heritage, and adaptation resourcing. It prioritises a three-fold strategy: strengthening knowledge systems, reducing exposure to climate risks, and enhancing adaptive capacity.

Past COPs, including COP29, have emphasised the need to decentralise the NAP and NDC development process, pushing for involvement of non-state and subnational stakeholders. India’s NAP development process involves consultative workshops, with the most recent one held in March 2025, organised by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Stakeholders included union and state government officials, scientists, academics, industry experts, and civil society representatives. While these measures are indicative of participatory approaches to climate action, they are not sufficient. There is a pressing need to galvanise and institutionalise the numerous efforts at the sub-national scale, especially grassroots action outside the ambit of state action.

This is critical to long-term success. Doing so lies in the remediation of the gap between local and national action through approaches that integrate important actors. In essence, India’s NAP process must be proactive in both generating new instruments and plans in response to current climate events and trends, as well as in leveraging existing mechanisms, emergent awareness of structural and historical inequities, and collective efforts already being taken at the grassroots level.

A shift away from the imposition of national plans on sub-national levels as a top-down approach to a consultative and participatory process is the need of the hour. The NAP and subsequent climate adaptation actions can evolve alongside the variability of lived experiences and respond to emergent concerns with improved relevance and efficiency. Equally critical is the recognition that these lived experiences are complex products of socio-economic, political, and environmental dynamics, and structural inequities borne from historical precedents. The base for capturing the lived experiences is already available with grassroots climate adaptation efforts occurring outside the state’s ambit across diverse sectors.

India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change is mitigation-heavy. Subsequently, down-the-line state and city climate action plans continue to be mitigation-focused. The need for local adaptation is being serviced largely by non-state actors. These efforts transcend existing political frameworks and are founded in traditional or hyperlocal knowledge and experiences. Integrating cognisance and comprehension of these into the NAP can ensure equitable climate action that addresses climate vulnerability on a fundamental level.

Even as these initiatives deliver localised and immediate solutions, they remain siloed. This is due to the lack of an overarching integrated guidance framework. The NAP should emerge as this integrated framework, listening to the decentralised voices and leveraging these towards visibility in broader plans. The compartmentalisation of efforts is glaringly visible, for instance, in cities where the urban development plan and climate action plan are currently evolving in relative isolation. Urban development and climate resilience are inextricably linked in ensuring effective, equitable, and efficient urban areas.

Ground inputs to inform policy

An iterative process must be institutionalised wherein sub-national and non-state actors can inform climate policy and be mobilised towards wider efforts on a larger scale. In this way, these valuable, on-the-ground inputs can be seamlessly integrated into the NAP and other national climate policies. In turn, this can systematise climate and adaptation efforts at the sub-national level, creating a feedback loop of sorts where voices from the ground are afforded greater visibility on the national and global scale.

Recent climate science communications, such as those from the IPCC’s AR6 report, indicate that current national efforts are insufficient to limit global warming to the 1.5°C threshold, to the extent that the 2°C upper limit will also be breached at the current rate. There is a growing need for novel approaches to climate action, including the development of new instruments and plans such as India’s NAP. However, the process of evolving the NAP must reflect the dynamic and intersectional nature of climate change consequences. This is possible only through the adoption of a decentralised and contextual approach.

India is the seventh most vulnerable country to climate extremes (out of 181 listed in the 2024 Global Climate Risk Index). It is also the key agent of change in leading climate action. As tensions surrounding existing gaps between local, national, and global priorities are exacerbated by increasingly intense and frequent climate events, overarching policies such as the NAP must be equipped to address these across sectors strategically and comprehensively.

For instance, India’s urban population is poised to increase, concurrently generating diverse lived experiences of climate change and associated coping mechanisms. These must be reflected as adaptation priorities and measures in the NAP. The NAP evolution process must not remain relegated to sporadic dialogues. Instead, efforts must be made to institutionalise inclusive and decentralised processes that give visibility to the lived experiences and are not an addendum to existing plans.

Occurring 10 years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement and five years away from the globally agreed deadline of 2030 to achieve major reductions in emissions, COP30 serves as a critical juncture for climate action. India must respond appropriately, adequately, and inclusively.

(Anjali is an urban and regional planner; Vanessa is an intern at a research-based planning and design practice)