Expert Speak Urban Futures
Published on Dec 22, 2020
Creating low carbon cities calls for a paradigm shift in government policies related to the built environment, particularly pertaining to land use, housing, urban mobility and water efficiency.
Decarbonising Cities: The 2021 post-pandemic resilience mantra This article is part of the series — What to Expect from 2021.
As 2020 draws to a close, cities are still coming to terms with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts. The pressure will remain in 2021 to not only to build back ‘better’, but also build back ‘right.’ “Cities are on the frontline of impact, but also of solutions,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres while referring to the pandemic and its urban impact. The ‘right’ seems to be one driven by the vision of a green and sustainable reset and recovery, which will be defined by building ecological economies and green communities focused on decarbonisation. Decarbonising cities is a process by which urban development can be harnessed to minimise natural resource depletion and create lower carbon actions generated through the built environment.

The pressure will remain in 2021 to not only to build back ‘better’, but also build back ‘right.’

The Paris Agreement deliverables, which were left on the sidelines as the world grappled with COVID-19, have made a comeback and will now increasingly drive every agenda on cities and climate. Cities consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for more than 70 percent of global CO2 emissions, which must be controlled. The other challenge is to meet the commitment of keeping the rise of global temperature to below 2°C. One-third of greenhouse gases emitted in cities comes from buildings, and in cities like New York, London and Tokyo, this can go up to 70 percent. Creating low carbon cities calls for a paradigm shift in government policies related to the built environment, particularly pertaining to land use, housing, urban mobility and water efficiency. This will need a three-pronged approach. First, is to create sufficient data infrastructure and ensure transparency in access. Second, is to remove all the traditional barriers of bureaucracy to establish inclusivity, encourage seamless processes and increase affordability. And third, is to ensure integration of bottom-up changes across society with public support and participation at the municipal level.

The Paris Agreement deliverables, which were left on the sidelines as the world grappled with COVID-19, have made a comeback and will now increasingly drive every agenda on cities and climate.

For cities in India, it is critical to have a robust data creation, monitoring and analysis framework, which will help determine the climate commitments. Such a framework will form the basis of a national strategy integrated with sub-national action at the city levels. An ORF study on the availability of open data sources for industrial pollution in the country found that despite there being 4,000 online continuous emissions/effluents monitoring systems in different pollutive industries across the country, the data is mostly inaccessible or opaque. This has led to inconsistency in outcomes and investment decisions. There is an urgent need to build city emission open databases and calculators to compute carbon usage in the built environment. Bureaucracy has the power to make or break a policy. The government will need to depart from its traditional ways and enhance training, capacity building and skill development to get the administration in sync. A deep understanding of materials, vehicles and energy will help in developing accurate terminology, aid reporting and in building robust frameworks to achieve the right balance between technology, people and the economy.

For cities in India, it is critical to have a robust data creation, monitoring and analysis framework, which will help determine the climate commitments.

The Step Code put together by Canada’s British Columbia trains its frontline architects and engineers in the latest energy technologies related to the built environment, making them project champions. The Netherlands, which is at the forefront of the decarbonising promise, has put its municipalities and provinces at the heart of the Dutch Climate Agreement. It is reducing its dependence on natural gas and boiler systems for heating buildings and adopting more climate-friendly technologies and energy sources. While the municipal governments look after planning and coordination within neighbourhoods, the provinces look at issues of regional cooperation for the climate. This is done through a district-oriented approach which goes in tandem with regional energy strategies. Globally, only the large cities that are part of larger global networks are included in these processes. The challenge for India will be to decentralise its approach and ensure that small- and medium-sized cities, which are urbanising, also get involved in knowledge and technology exchange. While policies and technologies can be drawn up, and there will be funds to match India’s green dreams, it is the people’s participation, behaviour change and political proactiveness that is crucial in deciding the future of cities post-pandemic.
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Contributor

Sayli UdasMankikar

Sayli UdasMankikar

Sayli UdasMankikar was a Senior Fellow with the ORF's political economy programme. She works on issues related to sustainable urbanisation with special focus on urban ...

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