Over the last few years, there is a substantial and growing body of evidence on climate change impacts and policy responses, both globally and in India. India has initiated several adaptation and mitigation measures, steering economic development on a climate-friendly path, realigning current investments and committing additional resources. The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) has already set the landmark for climate change action in the country.

Climate change is a complex policy issue with major implications in terms of finance. All actions to address climate change ultimately involve costs. Funding is vital for developing countries to design and implement adaptation plans and projects. The problem is more severe for developing countries such as India, which would be one of the hardest hit by climate change, given its need to finance developmental issues such as poverty eradication, food security, providing clean drinking water, sanitation etc. In the medium and long term, stand-alone projects are unlikely to meet all adaptation requirements in a cost-effective, scalable manner and therefore mainstreaming adaptation into development planning is an effective way to respond to climate change. The expected benefits include avoided policy conflicts, reduced risks and vulnerabilities, and leveraging the much larger financial flows in sectors affected by climate risks. While mainstreaming of climate change adaptati on in policy happens at the institutional level, mainstreaming at the programme/ scheme level needs to be preceded by plans that help communities better adapt to those climate change related vulnerabilities and challenges. This involves identifying sector-specific vulnerabilities of the communities and the region, capacity building of communities, capacity development of institutions facilitating the planning/implementation processes, integration of those concerns in the plans for the schemes/ sectors and a mechanism that ensures that activities are undertaken as per the prepared plans during implementation.

Another larger question that needs debate is also the overall planning process in the country within which adaptive planning needs to be embedded. Steps towards adaptive planning need to factor in the limitations of the current planning process such as lack of local participation in the planning process, lack of convergence among stakeholders, scheme-based responses to village needs, multiplicity of plans (village/district plans, plans for flagships, departmental plans) which do not necessarily dovetail into one another, ‘transmission losses’ of local priorities at each step towards aggregation of plans and the limited capacities of mentoring institutions and functionaries at the local level. q