- As Indian cities expand, the impact of climate hazards varies widely due to socioeconomic inequalities and political and cultural factors.
- Kochi Municipal Corporation’s think tank, Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development (C-HED) with its team of environmental engineers, researchers and ecologists, has been driving sustainable urban resilience initiatives.
- Institutions addressing urban climate resilience must prepare a vision statement for the city’s future and focus on innovation and planning, experts say.
Cities lie at the forefront of the climate crisis, contributing heavily to greenhouse gas emissions while also reeling from impacts like heat islands, floods, droughts and public health risks. At the same time, India’s urban population continues to swell – rising about from 32% in 2013 to 36.3% in 2023. By 2050, India’s urban population is projected to reach 53%, adding 416 million people, according to a UN report.
Beyond climate risk, a large percentage of urban settlements are ill-equipped with basic services, too. As of 2019, one in six urban dwellers lived in slums officially considered ‘unfit for human habitation.’ A report by the Asian Development Bank emphasises building resilience against environmental stresses in cities where underprivileged urban communities live.
A 2011 US-based study explored how the term ‘urban climate resilience’ was defined and measured. It found one of the emerging themes at the time to be “capacity for learning and innovation.”
Rewind to the year 2000 in the modestly sized, tier-two city of Kochi, Kerala. Conversations about not only defining but also devising action steps to build capacity for resilience had already been ignited within the local government.
Local government body in Kochi quietly sets an example
With technical support from UNESCO and other organisations, the Council of the Kochi Municipal Corporation (KMC) set up the think tank Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development (C-HED) in 2002. While there had been some efforts to develop a framework for waste management earlier, KMC sought a more holistic approach to tackle the increasingly complex challenges of sustainable development in a growing city.
According to a paper published earlier this year by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), “KMC is perhaps the only urban local government that has an R&D [research and development] centre” to tackle such concerns. “Since its inception, C-HED has been involved in mainstreaming climate change aspects in works of the municipal corporation,” it says. The Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), a public sector company, awarded C-HED for its innovative urban governance model in 2020. The organisation also presented its work at the World Urban Forum that year.
C-HED has developed a green building checklist, a crucial open-access resource for residential societies. Parts of this have been implemented in their ‘Sustainable Neighbourhood’ project, which combines renewable energy, nature-based sewage (NBS) treatment, and green infrastructure like cool and green roofs. According to the C-HED website, NBS is a decentralised approach that can be easily adopted in urban areas. Usually, overflow from septic tanks seeps into the ground through a soak pit, polluting groundwater. Instead, NBS channels the overflow under the surface of a gravel bed with plants, which host bacteria that act as a filter. The emerging water is reused for irrigation.
“We don’t do large-scale implementation. We mostly focus on innovating pilot projects open for replication by other agencies,” said Rajan Chedambath, C-HED’s director since its inception. The holistic approach envisioned by KMC is evident in the diversity of projects led by C-HED, including decentralised renewable energy, ecological restoration, creation of biodiversity checklists, and disaster preparedness. The team comprises 14 full-time staff, including environmental engineers, researchers, horticulturists and ecologists.
Connecting biodiversity to resilience
In the summer of 2024, Kochi experienced an intense heat wave. Palakkad recorded 41.8 degrees Celsius, the second-highest temperature since 1901, which was 5.5°C above average. This year, too, temperatures have already begun soaring in mid-February. In response to Kochi’s growing heat island effect, KMC launched the Kawaki initiative, a community-led scientific plantation of 1,200 native species saplings in public spaces.
Kochi’s Mangalavanam Bird Sanctuary, along with its coastline, backwaters, mangroves, and urban green spaces, host a diversity of birdlife, reptiles and other fauna, as noted in a biodiversity index developed by C-HED in 2020. The index also logged 45 medicinal plant species. With aquatic, brackish and marine ecosystems being abundant in Kochi, the conservation of canals is of utmost importance. “We began advocating for the conservation of canals when there wasn’t widespread recognition of the need for such efforts. When floods started becoming more frequent, the Council slowly began to realise the importance of the canals,” said Chedambath.
A major turnout by C-HED is their ‘Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment’ report published in 2021, which paints a comprehensive picture of Kochi’s risk factors, including sea level rise, coastal erosion, rainfall patterns and subsequent flooding, water scarcity, temperature rise, and ecosystem changes. It offers evaluations of impending impacts on people, economy, environment and built infrastructure, which are projected to be particularly affected by sea level rise, with the most vulnerable sectors being the tourism industry, Kochi Port and fisheries. Emphasising that ecosystem changes also impact agriculture and fisheries, C-HED calls for “the mapping of food systems and availability in risk situations” by city authorities.
Chedambath added that some projects fail to get implemented because of a lack of public understanding. He recalls when two wastewater treatment plant projects were proposed for the city. However, there was a gap in communicating the need for those plants, and people protested against it. “A city without a wastewater treatment facility is like a home with air conditioning and no toilet,” said Chedamnath.
Urban India’s journey to climate resilience
Indian cities are expanding rapidly while facing increasing climate hazards. Rising temperatures, unpredictable weather, sea level rise, floods, and droughts pose growing threats to urban populations. However, the impact of these hazards varies widely due to socioeconomic inequalities and political and cultural factors. Given these dynamic challenges, experts emphasise the need for local planning and the role of organisations like C-HED.
“It is not enough for only the government or a private entity to take action. It’s challenging for non-governmental entities or the private sector to work with the government on issues of climate resilience or city development,” said Chetan Vaidya, an independent urban advisor and former director of the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and the National Institute of Urban Affairs. He is one of the authors of the MoHUA report that highlighted C-HED as a unique model.
“So a platform like C-HED, which is supported by the municipal corporation or development authority and also benefits from the involvement of the private sector, is very good for a city’s planning and action,” he said.
Vaidya added that such a body can benefit from the strength of the government in terms of access, finances and human resources. Where a government body like the municipal corporation may lack flexibility for collaboration and innovation, an interdisciplinary think tank like C-HED fills in the gap. Institutions addressing urban climate resilience must include preparing a vision statement for a city’s future and – like the C-HED model – focus on innovation and planning, according to him.
Cities have a significant role in mobilising immediate action, said Shruti Narayan, Managing Director of Regions and Mayoral Engagement at C40, a global network of leaders of global cities to coordinate climate action. “Cities will always be the first responders when a climate disaster hits. Local deployed development capital has the best impact because the local authorities know what is needed. There has to be a way that the local authorities, the counsellors, and the ward levels can feed into the municipal corporations, which then come together and feed into the state. Because I think the challenge now is that there is a disjunction,” she said.
Narayan added that cities are pivotal in disaster preparedness as well. “The local authorities best understand future-proofing because if a disaster hits, they know which areas and populations are vulnerable,” she said.
Narayan said that governance systems in India must mainstream climate and change the approach of looking at governance and climate action separately. “Cities should start looking at climate budgeting. Development authorities of cities, responsible for creating master plans, must also integrate climate actions.”
She also emphasised the importance of city authorities from across the country coming together and learning from each other, especially from institutions like C-HED, which already possess a wealth of experience.
“All metropolitan cities should have such a department/cell or institutionalised mechanism to address climate change,” Jaya Dhindaw wrote to Mongabay India over text. Dhindaw is an urban development professional and researcher who works with the World Resources Institute. “For smaller towns and urban areas, these can be present at zonal or cluster levels, with the requisite implementation mechanisms, protocols and expertise.”
She added that the biggest challenge to building resilience in urban areas is often that climate solutions are intersectional. “If we hope to see real change on the ground, we will need to collaborate across sectors and stakeholders,” she wrote.
Read more: Can carbon-positive villages pave the way for climate resilience?
Banner image: An aerial view of Kochi city. Image by Ranjithsiji via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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