Mumbai's 10,000 cr climate budget | Yay or nay?

An brief review of Mumbai's first ever climate budget

Highlights from Mumbai’s first ever climate budget

• BMC has allocated INR 10,224 cr for climate-relevant activities. This accounts for 32% of the total BMC budget.

• The biggest chunk - INR 9,700 cr (i.e. 97% of the total climate budget) is going towards urban flooding and water resource management. Other major areas include INR 260 cr for waste management and INR 177 cr for urban greening and biodiversity.

• Mumbai is the first city in India and only the 4th city in the world to publish a climate budget following Oslo, London and New York.

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Mumbai published its inaugural climate budget on World Environment Day, June 5. The report maps the BMC budget for the year to the climate priorities that were identified in the Mumbai Climate Action Plan, published in 2022.

What is a climate budget?

A climate budget tells us the allocation of funds from a city’s municipal budget towards climate related initiatives.

Priorities identified by the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP)

Mumbai Climate Action Plan (2022)

Mumbai published a climate action plan in 2022. The climate budget is supposed to see how much of the city budget aligns with the climate action plan. So let’s first see what the climate action plan said.

The Mumbai climate action plan looks at 2 kinds of actions:

• Mitigation: Actions that will help reduce emissions (e.g. switching to EVs, switching to renewable energy) and thus reduce the impacts of climate change in the future

• Adaptation and Resilience: Actions that will help us better manage the risks that we are going to face given the damage already done. This includes things that will help us deal with heat waves, urban flooding, increasing cyclones etc.

The MCAP has identified these 6 action tracks to tackle climate change and meet the decarbonisation goals for Mumbai

Source : Mumbai Climate Action Plan (2022)

So what does the Mumbai climate budget say?

1. The BMC has a budget of ~31,000 cr and ~10,000 cr has been allocated to ‘climate change relevant’ activities. So approx. 32% of the BMC budget can be called a ‘climate budget’

2. ~97% of the climate budget has gone towards just 1 of the 6 action areas from the climate action plan: Urban flooding and water resource management

Source: Mumbai Climate budget FY 24-25

3. Activities in ‘Urban flooding and water resource management’ include build flood resilient systems and infrastructure (5.74%), localized water conservation and efficiency (0.07%), reducing pollution and restoring aquatic ecosystems (18.38%), safe and affordable drinking water (6.09%), clean, safe, and accessible toilets (0.2%), and disaster risk and impact reduction (0.07%).

4. Examples of initiatives in the other 5 action areas:

   1. Energy and buildings: Hybrid hydro energy project, use of LED bulbs

   2. Integrated mobility: Procuring EVs, improvement of footpaths

   3. Sustainable waste management: Waste to energy project at the Deonar dumping ground, Organic waste converters at municipal markets

   4. Urban greening and biodiversity: measures to ensure survival of mangroves

   5. Air quality management: Installation of air quality monitors

5. More than 20 departments in BMC (including Solid waste management, Water supply department, transport department, markets department etc.) have taken part in the climate budgeting process and will be tracking the climate impact of initiatives spearheaded by them.

You can read the full report here: Mumbai climate budget report

Why do we need a climate budget?

1. Tells us where we stand

A climate budget evaluates all the items in a city’s municipal budget against climate priorities. It thus tells us what proportion of the budget is going towards activities that advance our climate targets.

The city administration can talk about how important climate change is as an issue, but a budget tells us if they are really putting their money where their mouth is.

2. Money is the fuel

There are a lot of good solutions that can address climate change, but all of them need money. Having a climate budget is a way to ensure that climate initiatives get the funding they need.

3. Mainstreams the climate agenda

This is now part of the BMC budget, which means that in every department’s budget, initiatives have been marked as relevant to climate and their impact is getting tracked. As a result, every department is accountable for the climate impact of their initiatives. It is not some lone climate action cell trying to get this done, but the collective responsibility of multiple departments.

4. Builds accountability and transparency

There’s no better way to build accountability in a government set up, than allocating some money. Once something is part of the budget, it is reviewed and audited and thus automatically brings in a mechanism to monitor and publish progress.

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Finally, a summary of what I thought of Mumbai’s first climate budget

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Yay or nay?

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References

1. Mumbai climate action plan (2022)

2. Mumbai climate budget FY 24-25

3. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Announces Climate Budget Report For Financial Year 2024-25 (Press release)

4. C40 climate budgeting program

5. New York City Climate Budget (FY 25)