Draft of Mumbai Climate Action Plan to be showcased at COP26 in Glasgow in November
A draft version of the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), to be completed next month by the World Resources Institute (India), will be showcased at the upcoming 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow in November.
A draft version of the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), to be completed next month by the World Resources Institute (India), will be showcased at the upcoming 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow in November. The final plan, a spokesperson of WRI said during an online webinar held Monday, will be completed by the end of the year.
The online webinar, which happened to be organised by WRI (India) under the banner of ‘Connect Karo’ also marked the first public address on MCAP by state environment and climate change minister Aaditya Thackeray after the recent public consultations hosted by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which ended on September 9. During the webinar, Thackeray delivered a keynote address under the title ‘Towards a Climate Resilient Mumbai’.
“We speak about the future being clean, green and electric, but there is no future unless we act on developing climate mitigation and adaption plans today. With MCAP, we are looking at an ambitious plan to restructure the city on the basis of ‘ease of living’. At a national level, there is a lot of talk about ease of doing business, where laws that are now redundant are being done away with, but in Maharashtra we are giving equal emphasis to ease of living also,” Thackeray said.
He also highlighted his government’s efforts to protect the Aarey forest and about 9,800 hectares of mangroves, which have been given the status of reserve forest since the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government came to power.
“I don’t think any other state government would have the audacity to declare 800 acres a forest in the middle of an extremely urbanised city,” he said.
In addition, he also said that the proposed State Council for Climate Change, which was sanctioned by the Maharashtra cabinet earlier this month, will have weekly meetings to set and review climate action targets in the state.
“The real challenge is in redefining urbanisation by reimagining what constitutes development. Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray believes that development is essential, but we cannot do it at the cost of our forests. That would be counterproductive,” the minister said.