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THEME PAPER
governance challenges,
which relate to vertical and
horizontal coordination and
internal local government
operations and capacity;
and 2) sequential challenges,
which refer to challenges
that are faced in the cycle of
delivering or implementing
action. Under these two
overarching categories/
themes, some of the major
challenges faced by Indian
cities in mainstreaming
climate resilience are as
follows:
Governance: Need for
integration of objectives of
national policies with local
aspirations
The governance structure
in India can be described as
a centralized quasi federal
system, consisting of the
central government, the state
government and the local
governing bodies. Climate
action planning efforts are
needed from all participating
stakeholders. To ensure that
the impact is visible and
transformative, a robust
bottom-up approach which
enables feedback from local
levels to refine and improve
state and national level policy,
programmatic, and financial
decisions is required. Such an
approach could strike a right
balance between the bottom-
up and top-down approach by
correlating and tying policies
and missions developed at
the national and state levels
with local aspirations and
ambitions. Currently, climate local communities and critical
resilience planning in India infrastructure in cities should
is disconnected from the form the backbone of climate
discourse on urbanisation action planning.
which is not preferable as
Indian cities contribute Climate Financing
significantly to emissions. Cities often face the challenge
of accessing funding to take
Monitoring: Need for climate action forward. A
disaggregated and spatial potential reason is that the
data at the local level for ULBs struggle to demonstrate
evidence-based decision a financial case for climate
making action. Often, they also lack
It is important to track and financial autonomy to deploy
monitor the impacts of local appropriate fund-raising
climate action on urban mechanisms. The constraints
economies, environment, and imposed by weaknesses in
communities, to ensure that existing urban public finance
national policies are grounded institutions leads to distinct
in local reality. Monitoring, gap in - (a) the integration
Reporting and Verification of climate resilience aspects
(MRV) of local climate action in national urban missions
is a vital step towards vertical and programmes that
integration. At the local level, can support in funding
MRV leads to increased adaptation-oriented city- and
transparency and credibility neighbourhood-level projects;
of local actions and identifies (b) the channelling of urban
good practices (ICLEI 2016). resilience investments from
Developing actionable different avenues, such as
climate change solutions the disaster mitigation funds
requires disaggregated data, available with ULBs, green cess
location intelligence, and GIS- in environment and energy,
based analysis. Under the and the penalties imposed by
Atal Mission for Rejuvenation regulating institutions (e.g.
and Urban Transformation National Green Tribunal) for
(AMRUT) of the Government environmental violations; and
of India, there is a provision (c) sourcing of funds from
to collate geo-spatial data non-governmental sources,
on urban land use, utilities, including the private sector
and building footprints (Sethi, et al. 2021).
and topography of Indian
cities (TCPO 2016). For Technical Capacity
effective evidence-based Indian cities are facing
planning, these datasets limitations in technical
along with an in-depth capacity and knowledge
vulnerability assessment of to interlink the process of
October 2021 Volume 22 No. 2 - SHELTER 5