Mumbai Civic Body Introduces Its First Climate Budget Report

On World Environment Day, the Brihanmumbai Corporation (BMC) has introduced a climate budgeting process to work on achieving the goals set by the Paris Agreement.

In 2022, the corporation published the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), which serves as a roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city.

The city's first-ever Climate Budget Report was presented by the Additional Municipal Commissioner (City) Dr Ashwini Joshi and Deputy Municipal Commissioner Minesh Pimple.

The climate budget is not an independent report by itself, but it takes 32.18 per cent of the capital budget, which amounts to Rs 10,224 crore, to work on the environment-centric work by the corporation.

"This is not an independent budget; it is a part of the BMC budget," said Dr Joshi.

The 2024-25 report seeks to prioritise the climate-centric commitments of the corporation and integrate them into the city's budget. The report states that it is aimed at helping policymakers, researchers, and students to know more about the city's climate priorities. The report is also aimed at increasing awareness among financial institutions to get more climate funding from them.

Mumbai became one of the 13 cities to be a part of C40's Cities' climate budget pilot programme in September 2021. One of the main objectives of joining the pilot was to bring climate into the mainstream fold of governance.

"Mumbai is the fourth city, after Oslo, London, and New York to undertake such an initiative," said the Deputy Commissioner Pimple.

Mumbai, which is one of the worst rain-affected regions in Maharashtra, has also faced problems relating to air pollution in the last few years. Besides that - urban heat, urban flooding, landslides, and coastal risks have been added to the list of key climate risks.

"The electric vehicles will be more in number in coming years in public sphere. The work has already started," Mr Pimple said.

The BMC's first-ever climate budget report was made with the help of 20 BMC departments. With this as the first step, the corporation aims at gauging the city's progress on the guidelines mentioned in MCAP. The corporation is also working on the city's greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory to understand the progress made since 2022.