Expert Speak Terra Nova
Published on Oct 26, 2021
If India intends to meet its climate pledges, well-planned nature-based interventions need to be employed by the ULBs for a sustainable future.
Nature-based solutions for cities will require stringent systems

The heat is on cities today more than ever.

Even as top layers of government work on policies and missions to curb greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and meet domestic targets, several Indian cities, primarily municipal bodies are on the frontline of climate shocks and have been forced to act.

There is a rush amongst cities to sign up for climate pledges and chart out climate action plans. Time is scarce, and crucial just transitions related to urban planning, design, and infrastructure development in cities are overdue. There is a push to integrate nature-based solutions in the city climate plans, to deal with several challenges that cities are facing owing to the high population densities and pressure on infrastructure development while balancing the the socio-economic requirements of cities with GHG emissions.

Nature-based solutions are an umbrella that focuses on three pillars—climate change, health, and urban resilience. These are low-carbon and climate-resilient interventions, an alternative to conventional infrastructure creation if we need cities to have a sustainable revival focused on adapting and mitigating climate change. While nature-based transitions are much desirable, they come with a set of challenges which are related to governance, capacities, and funds. But before we throw down the gauntlet on systemic issues that municipal bodies need to deal with, let us look at the enormity of the problem and its current impact. Globally, cities which account for just 2 percent of the total surface area, are responsible for 78 percent of global energy consumption and 70 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

In India, urban areas account for  44 percent of the GHG emissions. Many of these emissions emanate from building of infrastructure, transport projects, industrial production, real estate construction, and waste creation. The increasing pressure on urban-built environment has caused a massive degradation in the natural environment of cities leading to extreme weather events like sea-level rise, floods, temperature rise, and increase in pollution. An ORF paper which included a compilation of several studies on the environmental factors of six Indian cities and its built-up areas from 1973 and future assessment of the situation in 2030 highlights the green (trees, vegetation) and blue (waterbodies) nature-based losses that urban areas have faced (See Figure I). Bengaluru has seen a 925-percent increase in built-up area in 40 years. Mumbai, on the other hand, witnessed a 60-percent loss in vegetation and 65-percent decrease in waterbodies.

These are low-carbon and climate-resilient interventions, an alternative to conventional infrastructure creation if we need cities to have a sustainable revival focused on adapting and mitigating climate change.

The impact of such losses is highlighted in the 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), supported by NASA, which has claimed that by the end of the century, 12 of India’s coastal cities that include Mumbai, Chennai, Vishakapatnam, Mangalore, Cochin amongst others, could be an additional three feet below water than they are now. India’s urban population is expected to grow from 410 million in 2014 to 814 million by 2050 and arresting such climate impacts will be crucial.

Figure I-

Source: ORF Occasional Paper Blue-Green Infrastructure: An Opportunity for Indian Cities’

Pivotal interventions

Let us look at some of the crucial interventions that municipal bodies must consider if they want to achieve their commitments made in their city climate plans and pledges considering nature-based interventions:

  1. It will be crucial to underpin the importance of the much undervalued co-benefits of developing nature-based solutions between departments, government institutions, and parastatal agencies that function in a city, provide services and build infrastructure to support its economy. There could be a common climate authority that works to bring together the common goals, set strategies, pool funds, and make the direct and indirect impacts of nature-based integrated solutions known.
  1. One of the biggest challenges for cities is the limited knowledge and awareness amongst city administrators and implementers about nature-based solutions and climate challenges and risks. Substantial investment will need to be made in capacity building of technical holistic approaches. The indigenous, traditional and institutional knowledge on nature-based interventions, which comes through informal mechanisms of civil society will need to be tapped into.
  1. Decentralised approaches have been celebrated during the pandemic, and this approach will need to be taken in climate planning. Small piecemeal targets will need to be drawn out, as a part of the larger strategic nature solution plan. This is important considering that the breaking down processes to the ward level makes it more transparent for operation and maintenance of infrastructure.
  1. While urban planning and design will play an important role in climate adaptation, it is important that such planning is dynamic in nature and not fixed. Also the scope of such planning needs to be expanded beyond only spatial interventions into more strategic ones, which take into account the constantly evolving nature of climate change, its impact, and the quick measures needed to mitigate the damages. This will require introducing and reworking of integrated urban regulatory provisions frameworks that are localised to deal with city-specific challenges.
The indigenous, traditional and institutional knowledge on nature-based interventions, which comes through informal mechanisms of civil society will need to be tapped into.
  1. Cities do not have the financial capacities to support nature-based interventions, and thus, the role of private sector investments become crucial for bringing in innovations and restoring the damages. Policies that remove market barriers and create higher capacities for risk management will need to be put in place that will help in boosting the confidence for profitable investments. Lack of data and disclosure, and the absence of quantification are some of the factors that keep private investors away from this space. This could be in addition to the climate gap funds that multilateral organisations and banks are extending to cities for climate-related projects.

Indian cities are at a nascent stage of creating city climate plans and floating projects to both mitigate and adapt to the impact that rapid and unplanned urbanisation has caused. This should be seen as an opportunity in hand to create the required systems and infrastructure to ensure issues of capacity, governance, and funds are created to bring in nature-based solutions for a just urban future.

The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.

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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