Smaller cities can lead the way on climate resilience

Why in the News

Heat and flooding strike Indian cities every season, yet cities handle them separately. The same decisions on land, buildings and infrastructure shape both. Smaller cities, where much of the housing India will need is still unbuilt, can plan for both from the start and avoid the costly retrofits large cities face.

What is climate-resilient development?

1. What it is: Climate-resilient development is a framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It plans adaptation to climate impacts, emissions reduction and sustainable development together, rather than one at a time.
2. Why it is needed: Cities usually treat heat and flooding as separate problems. Both are shaped by the same decisions about land, buildings and infrastructure.
3. Single design for two hazards: It is like designing a house for both summer and monsoon before building it, not patching it each season.
4. The takeaway: The task is not to respond to each climate stress in turn but to rethink how cities grow.

What frameworks and programmes already exist?

1. Long-term strategy: India’s Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy, submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gives a frame for building climate concerns into urban development.
2. Habitat mission: The National Mission on Sustainable Habitat serves the same purpose.
3. Flood programme: The Urban Flood Risk Management Programme now covers 18 cities.
4. Heat as a notified disaster: Heat is now recognised as a notified disaster, which allows disaster funds to be used for heat resilience.

Why do smaller cities hold the advantage?

1. Where urban India lives: More than half of India’s urban population lives in cities of fewer than one million residents.
2. Housing still to come: Much of the housing India will need is yet to be built.
3. Retrofit cost: Retrofitting large cities is costly and complex. Smaller cities can still shape how they expand.
4. Lock-in risk: Today’s choices on roads, drainage, buildings and public spaces can lock cities into high energy use and climate vulnerability, or create resilient neighbourhoods.

How does city form shape cooling demand?

1. Heat and power: Rising temperatures push up cooling needs and electricity demand.
2. Urban form: A study of 88 Indian cities found that land use, building density, urban expansion and green cover all influence cooling demand.
3. Cooling Action Plan: The India Cooling Action Plan estimates that building design, energy efficiency and thermal comfort practices could cut cooling demand by 20%.
4. Role of regulation: Urban planning and building regulations can therefore reduce heat exposure and limit energy demand.

Challenges

1. Fragmented decisions: Development authorities draw master plans, public works departments design roads, utilities run services and municipalities regulate buildings, each separately.
2. Climate outside routine appraisal: Climate risk is not yet part of routine planning, project appraisal or investment decisions.
3. Data without local knowledge: Spatial data and risk models lose value when they ignore how residents actually live and move.

Way Forward

1. Climate in every appraisal: Make climate considerations part of routine planning, project appraisal and investment.
2. Departmental coordination: Coordinate planning, works, utility and municipal departments so their investments align.
3. Redesigned existing funds: Allocate municipal revenues, government transfers and scheme-based grants with climate goals, without waiting for a separate fund.
4. Pilots through private finance: Use corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds, impact investment and development finance for pilots that generate evidence to scale.
5. Risk mapping with residents: Combine spatial data, risk assessments and scenario modelling with how residents walk, commute and use public spaces, instead of copying big-city models.

Conclusion

India has national frameworks for urban climate risk, but they do not yet shape the everyday decisions on how cities grow. The test is whether smaller cities build climate appraisal into master plans and budgets before their housing is built.

Key numbers

1. Unbuilt housing: more than 50% of the housing India needs by 2070.
2. India Cooling Action Plan horizon: 2037-38, the year by which the cooling demand cut is estimated.

Schemes and Initiatives for Urban Disaster Resilience

1. Urban Disaster Management Authorities: The Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025 lets States create city disaster authorities. Only Karnataka has set one up, for Bengaluru.
2. Heat Action Plans: Around 300 cities and districts across 23 heatwave prone States hold Heat Action Plans.
3. National Disaster Management Plan: Issued in 2016 and revised in 2019, it is India’s first all hazard plan aligned to the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction.
4. Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI): Launched by India in 2019, it brings together over 50 countries on disaster proofing critical infrastructure.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS3, 10 marks] Discuss how the contradiction between ‘rapid infrastructure development’ and ‘disaster-risk reduction’ in ecologically-sensitive areas of India can be managed, with suitable examples.”