First Climate Budget in India: All you Need to Know!

For the very first time, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the civic body for Mumbai has come up with the first-ever Climate Budget Report. It is also called the Green Budget book for this financial year, 2024-2025. A total of 10,224.24 crore has been announced to be allocated for the purpose out of Rs. 31,774.59 crore of the total BMC budget. 

Worldwide, Mumbai is the fourth city after Oslo, London, and New York to have come up with a climate budget and the first in India for the same. The decision has been made after a collaborative decision between 20 BMC departments.

Back In 2022, the corporation published the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), to serve as a roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city and the budget is part of the process to work on achieving the goals set by the Paris Agreement.

What's there in the Plan?

The budget presented by the BMC for climate issues includes urban flood and water resource management as the largest share of the environmental budget. It includes the departments of rainwater channels, sewage projects, sewage operations, Mumbai sewerage projects, water supply projects, and sanitation-related activities in solid waste management.

The budget aims to strengthen the governance system to meet the problems of climate change in Mumbai. The department will check whether the projects that are undertaken are environmental-friendly or not and the work will be prioritised accordingly. The budget also aims to meet the problem of temperature rise in the financial capital.

BMC had been seeking to put the climate-budgeting into the existing municipal budget. Now, the body is looking forward to working towards developing a robust Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting (MER) system. The exercise conducted by the BMC will pave the way for setting emission reduction targets for the energy, transport and waste sectors.

As per the BMC’s report, Mumbai has a target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Talking about the Interim and long-term targets include 30% emission reduction by 2030, 44% by 2040, and net zero by 2050 against base year emissions (2019). In the absence of no action, emissions are expected to increase by 170% between 2019 and 2050. 

For the concrete plan, the climate budget team has categorised budget items into direct and enabling actions. The direct actions have been divided into quantified and not quantified actions. It must be known that Mumbai is a part of C40 Cities’ climate budget pilot programme along with 13 other global cities.

The climate-relevant departments of the BMC include Environment, Disaster Management, Solid Waste Management, Education, Storm Water Drains, Mechanical and Electrical, City Engineers, Development Planning, Gardens, Markets, Public Health, Information Technology, Transport, Roads and Traffic, Bridges, Hydraulic Engineering, Water Supply Project, Sewerage Project, Sewerage Operations, and the Mumbai Sewage Disposal Project.

The presented report aims to help policymakers, researchers, and students learn more about their city's climatic landscape. It also seeks to increase awareness among financial institutions, enabling them to secure more climate funding.