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Climate Change:
A Global Concern Demading Local Actions
T he
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 5th Assessment
Report "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" has
once again echoed the critical global implications of climate change.
According to the AR5 findings, climatic changes induced in the recent
decades have already started impacting ecosystems and communities in
different vulnerable parts of the world1. Such
impacts of climate change are going to get worse in a continuously
warming world, moving on a path of 2 degree temperature rise.
With insufficient mitigation actions taken by
polluting countries so far and increasing seriousness of climate change
impacts, the need to adapt to this changing climate has now become even
more important. The gap between countries’ emission reduction targets
and mitigation required to keep within a 2 degree warming, is making the
challenge of meeting adaptation needs grow bigger. Therefore, for a fast
growing economy and climate vulnerable country such as India, both
climate change adaptation and mitigation are equally important
priorities.
Localising Climate Actions
In a geographically diverse country such as India,
climate change adaptation needs vary with different ecosystems,
agro-climatic zones, contrasting rural-urban pressures and diverse
socio-economic conditions. Extending from the Himalayan region spanning
across 12 Himalayan states to a vast coastline of about 7500 kilometers,
India is highly and diversely vulnerable to climate change. Such varying
sensitivities pin-point that climate change adaptation strategies have
to be developed at a sub-national level for prioritising locale-specific
climate change vulnerabilities. The decentralisation of India’s National
Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) into State Action Plans on Climate
Change (SAPCCs) is a step forward in this direction. Under the aegis of
NAPCC, State Action Plans on Climate Change (SAPCCs) have now been
developed by various states of India for studying climate change at
regional levels in the country. The development of SAPCC supports
India’s architecture at state level to integrate climate change concerns
into sub-national policies and planning for locale specific adaptation
actions to battle climate change.
The development of State Action Plans on Climate
Change is a way forward to develop a framework that aims to build
climate change resilience at the local level and draws largely on sub
national planning, climate finance and technical capacities on climate
change.
So far, the drafting of State Action Plans on Climate
Change by different states opened new gateways for studying climate
change at a more specific level in the country. However, the next step
towards operationalising these plans into actions and executing
strategies in consensus with state development planning is still a major
challenge. Integrating climate change adaptation into planning and
identifying appropriate measures is a challenging task and needs
systemic thinking and collaborative efforts from all allied stakeholders
and sectors who share a common understanding and concern about climate
related issues. Effective adaptation actions rely to a great extent on
the capacities of the individuals and organisations mandated to steer
these processes as well as the capacities of networks and political
settings to create enabling conditions. Since adaptation is also
perceived as a term interchangeable with good development, it is
essential that a holistic thinking and planning to avoid mal-adaptation
is integrated at different stages of planning and implementation.
The National Action Plan on Climate Change also
identifies awareness raising and capacity building as important
prerequisites for supporting implementation of various missions
highlighted in each State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC).
Capacity building of sub-national decision makers, planners and
government officials on issues related to climate change can contribute
significantly to transferring knowledge and building skills of
communities to effectively adapt to climate change.
Current Gaps and Challenges
· State climate
change action plans are currently treated as parallel plans and have not
found indoors or entry points to internalise environment sustainability
and climate resilience into development plans2.
· Many of these
state action plans still needs to develop holistic climate profiles of
their state including GHG emissions, inventorisation and climate
scenarios. Various state action plans lack the clarity of climate
science due to inadequate climate science research and investments.
· Ideally to
integrate climate variability concerns and enable adaptation, the
objectives and strategies from the SAPCCs should get integrated in the
state plans and be translated into schemes and initiatives of the state
government. Currently this is not the case, although certain central and
state sponsored schemes do address issues of climate. However, regional
climate variability and specific interventions based on agro-climatic
zones are not addressed in these plans and they remain top-down in their
approach3.
· In addition
these state action plans are not strongly linked with political
priorities at a local level. Effective uptake of climate change and
environmental priorities in local political momentum can play an
important role in gathering the required bureaucratic support
· Capacity
constraints of state climate change units and other sectoral departments
have limited the long term sustainability of action. Strengthening the
long term capacity of local decision makers and planners is of utmost
importance for ensuring continuous efforts4.
· Climate finance,
a driver for implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation
strategies is inadequately understood not only at the state level but
also at the national level in the country. The understanding on
accessing international finance, public finance for climate change and
institutional readiness is still at a nascent stage and requires
immediate focus
· With the
government’s recent efforts to internalise climate change issues in
development concerns of the country, a large number of different
stakeholders now need to bring climate change on top of their
priorities. Currently, this is not the case. Local to national
politicians and parliamentarians largely lack awareness on the urgency
to deal with climate change. This lack of capacities to understand the
issue often makes it difficult to discuss the issue at public forums,
speeches and party agendas.
·
In addition, there is a complete disconnect between India’s stand and
position at international negotiations, India’s national response for
climate change adaptation and mitigation and sub-national implementation
of climate compatible development strategies. This is largely due to
weak understanding of decision makers and planners at different levels
of the government machinery to weave the issue together as an
overarching responsibility. Among, all the other challenges this is the
most crucial problem which is reducing the effect of any climate change
efforts (with respect to research, schemes, finance, action plans) taken
in the country.
Building Capacities: A Prerequisite for Effective Response to Climate
Change
The experiences from the formulation and
implementation of SAPCCs so far clearly indicate that strengthening the
technical capacities at the sub-national level is the key to mainstream
climate change in local development planning. This would not only ensure
institutional readiness to utilise latest knowledge and information
systems, decision support tools and technologies for climate resilience
but will also help to make effective use of climate finance. In order to
effectively link the eight climate change missions of NAPCC with state
plans and schemes, capacity building of planners, local institutions
(such as Panchayati Raj Institutions, District Planning Committees,
State departments) and people’s representatives is a pre-requisite.
To ensure that local actions for climate change are
implemented, there is a need for laying the foundation at the national
as well as the sub-national level. Building the capacities of
institutions, people representatives, policymakers, government officials
and local decision makers to understand the necessity of integrating
climate change in development planning is of utmost importance.
Realising this, Development Alternatives (DA) is working at several
levels of the governance system to build technical capacities of
decision makers on climate change. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, DA is
the technical support organisation to build the technical capacities of
the Government of Madhya Pradesh and the State Knowledge Management
Centre on Climate Change (SKMCCC). DA is strengthening the capacities of
SKMCCC in multi-dimensional roles that it is expected to play in the
state, namely:
· Creating
strategic knowledge on climate change through collection and analysis of
climate data and information and transcribing them into policy and
strategic action by the departments.
· Developing and
disseminating knowledge for scaling up of good practices.
· Contributing in
the development of climate resilient strategies and action.
· Developing
policy briefs to feed in the policy formulation processes.
·
Accessing climate finance for designing and developing adaptation
projects.
Similar to Madhya Pradesh, such initiatives are also
needed in different regions and states of the country to integrate
climate change thinking at the sub-national level.
Furthermore, strengthening information systems to
provide technical knowledge on climate change is crucial. Lastly, there
is a need to identify different ways to strengthen capacities for
operationalising means of implementation such as finance, institutions
and technologies.
q
Harshita Bisht
hbisht@devalt.org
Endnotes
1
https://ipccwg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdfv
2 Navroz K.
Dubash and Anu Jogesh, "From Margins to Mainstream? Climate Change
Planning in India as a ‘Door Opener’ to a Sustainable future," Centre
for Policy Research (CPR), Climate Initiative, Research Report (New
Delhi: CPR, February 2014)
3 Jha A. &
Bisht H., 2012. Information and Communication Needs for Climate Change
Adaptation. New Delhi: Development Alternatives
4 Bisht H. &
Sheikh G.G., 2012. Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation in Policy and
Planning. New Delhi: Development Alternatives
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