POLITICS: Staying afloat: Mumbai’s C40 Climate Action Plan falls short
By: Tanishka Sachidanand
Mumbai, commonly known as the city of dreams, faces a future that is waist-deep in floodwaters and rising sea levels. In the past couple of decades, several attempts have been made to adopt climate action mechanisms against sea level rise and flooding, although most of them have fallen short - as evidenced by this year’s flooding.
Against this backdrop, Aditya Thackerey, current environment minister of the state of Maharashtra, proposed a climate action plan. With the support of the C40 cities initiative, the action plan aims to mediate the ambitious goals of the Paris Climate Agreement at a local level for 97 megacities across the globe.
The action plan will be carried out in four stages. Stages one and two will focus on establishing a metric for existing vulnerabilities within a city and collecting demographic and tree cover data used for post-analysis. Stages three and four will focus on building a climate profile for verticals like air pollution, water resources, urban flooding, urban greenery, energy efficiency in municipal buildings, transport and mobility, and waste management.
The plan appears substantive, but questions remain.
The efficacy of the climate action plan remains questionable
While Mumbai’s climate action plan lays out a comprehensive vision for sustainable action against climate change, it stops short of setting achievable emission cuts and largely functions within the existing “business-as-usual” status quo. Moreover, the plan fails to consider the real focus: measuring carbon emissions from the industrial and transportation sector. By failing to prioritize emission source identification and reduction, the climate action plan sets itself up for failure and does not target the root cause of the climate crisis itself. Thus, it is likely to remain ineffective in protecting Mumbai from extreme temperatures and rising sea levels.
The climate plan seeks to promote sustainable infrastructure in Mumbai. But, current trends reveal that government spending on the expansion of car-specific transportation infrastructure is the highest it has ever been, making the city more addicted to fossil fuels. Investment in sustainable public infrastructure still doesn't figure in the government’s priority list. Residential infrastructure projects continue to pollute and degrade natural environments within and on the city's periphery. To be truly effective and inclusive, the climate action plan must commit to sustainable development by cracking down on the construction of ostentatious high rises, freeways, and malls and focus instead on incentivizing public transportation infrastructure and building high-density low rise developments to replace existing informal settlements.
Time is running out
With sea levels rising and monsoons increasing in intensity, a climate action plan that focuses simply on data collection will not meet the moment. The dangers of climate change are already being felt in the city and, at this moment, the government must establish immediate protections against climate change. Waiting on precise data collection through the proposed plan will only delay progress and worsen the ability of cities to make a smooth transition to adaptation. The climate action plan must take effect alongside immediate climate mitigation and adaptation strategies to be truly effective.
Finally, the climate action plan must propose substantial adaptation strategies for vulnerable communities in the city. Mumbai currently ranks high in terms of income inequality and at present 41% of the city's population live in informal settlements in the center and periphery of the city. This means that more than half of the city is high-risk, with additional vulnerabilities stemming from incoming migrant communities. To minimize human costs from climate change, the climate action plan will have to do substantially more than measure vulnerability through data-driven analysis. The plan must include strategies like a managed retreat to reduce human costs associated with climate change.
It is crucial now more than ever to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation swiftly and efficiently. The climate action plan laid out by the Mumbai government is a small step at a time when a sprint is needed. The plan lays out theoretical strategies for public infrastructure capacity-building and eradicating income inequality, but the real test for efficacy lies in the implementation. The stakes are higher and more urgent as climate vulnerabilities increase. This makes it critical for the Mumbai government to step up and replace wishy-washy climate action efforts with firm and rapid plans of action.
References
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