II. Low Carbon Pathways and Climate Policy
A. Preparation of Climate and Environment Action Plans for various Districts of India
The aim of the project was to prepare a comprehensive climate and environment action plan for 6 districts of India, namely, Pune and Nagpur in Maharashtra; Bhopal and Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Rajkot and Ahmedabad in Gujarat. The District and Environment Action Plan includes a comprehensive set of actions that the district administration in each of the respective districts could take to address climate change, largely from a climate mitigation perspective. The detailed plans include a detailed emissions estimations for the districts from 2005 to 2018/19; a detailed assessment of various policies and programmes that have been implemented in the said districts and any impact/s of the policies on climate, amongst others. The District Plans for Rajkot and Ahmedabad were released by the Chief Minister of Gujarat in February 2022. The climate action plans for Bhopal and Indore were launched in an event held in Bhopal in January 2022, while the plans for Pune and Nagpur were launched by the then Environment Minister of Maharashtra through a virtual meeting organised in February 2022.
B. GHG Platform India
The GHG Platform – India is a collective civil-society initiative providing an independent estimation and analysis of India’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across key sectors such as Energy, Waste, Industry, Agriculture, Forest and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sectors. The platform includes notable institutions such as CEEW, CSTEP, ICLEI South Asia, Vasudha Foundation, and WRI India. The platform was jointly conceptualised by Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation and Vasudha Foundation. Vasudha foundation also acts as the Secretariat of the Platform.
The platform currently hosts national estimates for GHG emissions from 2005 to 2015 by accounting CO2, CH4 and N2O gases. The platform provides sub-national GHG emission estimates as well. The platform also undertakes relevant analytical assessments to inform policy design and evaluation. The database produced and maintained by the platform is available in the public domain to enable third-party use, which is actively encouraged.
GHG Platform India draws its inspiration from a similar civil society initiative in Brazil, the “System for Estimation of Emissions of GHG” (SEEG). It is an excellent example of South-South Cooperation, where in the India Platform has been enriched by the Brazilian experience and benefited from their technical inputs.
C State Climate Action Plans
E. Mapping of policies of Indian States from a Climate Lens (2015-2017) (Assessing India’s Preparedness to address Climate Change)
Vasudha Foundation in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stifstung Foundation (HBF) is worked on addressing India’s preparedness on Climate Change. The project focused on whether India is in a position to address the various aspects of climate change and tests whether its policy framework addresses issues that arise out of dealing with climate change by examining two major reports, IPCC AR5 and the New Climate Economy Report. Phase 1 of the project looked at the national policies and schemes in line with the recommendations from IPCC AR5 and New Climate Economy: India Chapter. Phase 2 of the project focused on the state of preparedness of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. Vasudha Foundation created a comprehensive database capturing all the strategies from the State Action Plan on Climate Change and other government schemes that deal with climate change, environment, and sustainable development along with their budgetary allocations. The findings of the second phase were compiled in report titled ‘Policy Framework and Preparedness for Implementing Measures to Effectively Deal with Climate Change- An Analysis of four states in India’. The report also identifies possible gaps in the preparedness and comes up with a set of recommendations to address the possible gaps.