Building climate resilience collectively

#GS-03 Infrastructure, Climate Change

Long-Term Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LT-LCDS):

LT-LCDS is India’s long-term climate action plan unveiled at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCC (COP27), held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November.
It has multi-sectoral measures to reach a net-zero emissions status, climate-resilient urbanisation and forms a cornerstone of the Government of India’s strategy under the Paris Agreement.

A data-driven approach is essential to facilitate implementation of the LT-LCDS and other missions, and enable their integration.
Adequate data would make it easier to demonstrate urban planning strategies aimed at climate resilience through specific actions and interventions.
It would also allow us to link them to various finance streams accessible to the urban local bodies, which is highly important.
Cities need to have effective and efficient planning instruments that can translate master plans into transformative investment
The Urban Sustainability Assessment Framework (USAF) is a major tool which help in this.
USAF is a decision support tool of UN-Habitat for municipal commissioners and urban practitioners.
It enables cities to capture inter-sectoral data regularly and does the corresponding analysis on urban metrices.
This in turn helps in monitoring the performance of a city in static and dynamic contexts.

The urban transport sector is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
We can see this in cities such as Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) where they make up for 19% of the city’s GHG emissions.
Bhopal heavily favours non-motorised transport (NMT) with a 43% NMT modal share.
However, they provide access to public bike docking stops to only 24% of its population and only half of its streets have footpaths.
Hence, the city can immensely reduce its carbon footprint by designing ‘shared streets’ for personal vehicles, public transport, NMT and
They can also link these with future economic activity zones and underserved areas.
These streets can also be conduits for native plant species and improving groundwater recharge by integrating water-sensitive urban design features.
These measures have the potential of reducing Bhopal’s GHG emissions by up to 15 tCO2/annum per kilometre.

The suggested planning approach needs to have a comprehensive participation of all stakeholders in order to build climate resilience.
Active involvement from various tiers of government, non–governmental, community-based organisations, and academic institutions is needed at each step.
The means from building a sustainability profile to arriving at very specific interventions, there needs to be a coordination between government and civil society.
Changes in the city performance indicators will help to communicate the impact of these interventions to the decision-makers and the community at large.
This evidence-based approach can make the cities sustainable, resilient and inclusive with no one and no place left behind.