State Action Plans for climate change analysed

Recent years have shown a growing awareness on the relevance of climate change for India within the government as well as civil society, business and media. India has prepared its National Action Plan on Climate Change amidst growing international pressure to devise domestic climate adaptation strategies.

All the states were asked to develop State Action Plans in 2009 to tackle issues needing local adaptation interventions in a decentralised manner, and as of October 2014, 28 states and Union Territories have completed drafts of their plans. Of this,19 have been endorsed by the MoEF and three have been considered by the Expert Committee on Climate Change.

Analysis of state climate change plans

The paper titled 'From margins to mainstream? State climate change planning in India' published in the Economic and Political Weekly, presents the findings of a study that analysed the State Climate Plans in the five states of Himachal Pradesh (HP), Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Orissa and Sikkim. Its aim was to find out the extent to which these helped shift climate change from the margins to the mainstream of India’s development debate.

What did the analysis want to answer?

• What framework have the states employed for climate plans and how are these plans understood by the people who lead them as well as those who engage with the process?
• What is the process through which they have been put together and how has this  process affected the outcomes?
• What are the outcomes and do these add up to a re-envisioning of sustainable development?
• What are the prospects for implementation of ideas arising from state plans?

The study found that:

• Poor knowledge about climate change, and a lack of a conceptual framework with which to link sustainability and climate change, limited access to appropriate state-level climate science projections.
• State plans made limited use of relevant scientific knowledge on climate change, in large part because of difficulties in accessing such knowledge.
• The climate plan process found a balance between laying out a broad framework set by the Centre while leaving space for state direction.

In terms of the state plan processes:

• High levels of political attention translated to bureaucratic energy and proved helpful in mobilising bureaucrats from other departments.
• The nodal group-led model provided almost no scope for cross-departmental input or new ideas from within the process.
• In several states, the formal process was supplemented with consultations, but these did not have a tangible effect on outcomes.
• In all the states, there was considerable concern that the state plan be locally driven; in practice, states drew on external technical ability in a variety of ways.                                

In terms of outcomes:

• None of the states offered a clear, consistent and well-argued set of recommendations that amounted to either a vision or an action plan.
• The process did not facilitate a rethinking of development pathways.
• The process of preparing state plans contributed to the creation and entrenching of dedicated climate change institutions in all states except Karnataka.
• There was a broad convergence across state plans that implementation needed to be through line departments. However, there was no agreement on the mechanisms through which this implementation could be achieved.
• Officials across states conveyed their reluctance to include budgets for sectoral actions adding that stated numbers were estimates at best and had no technical basis.

The analysis revealed that there were shortcomings in the approach, process, formulation of outcomes, and implementation efforts. One of the common factors underlying these shortcomings was the shortsighted tendency to view State Climate Plans as vehicles to generate implementable actions, rather than as opportunities to redirect development towards environmental sustainability and climate resilience.

The study concluded that although concrete actions were important, they needed to be  guided by a broader vision that influenced future directions in important sectors such as agriculture, water and energy. Thus, state plans were not ends in themselves, but rather needed to be viewed as foundations on which climate concerns could be more effectively mainstreamed in local development planning.

Please download the paper below.