Exclusive: Mumbai Metropolitan Region to get Climate Action Plan

In the ambitious scenario, emissions are forecasted to reduce by 27% by the year 2030 and by 72% by the year 2050 as compared with the emission levels in 2019. This implies that the city will have a residual emission amounting to a 30% gap in meting the 2050 target of net-zero emissions

Mumbai: Seven months after the launch of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has revealed that a similar plan is in the works for the entire Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

When the MCAP came out, many experts said it is not enough to simply have a climate plan for Mumbai city and suburbs alone, because pollution and climate impacts do not respect administrative boundaries (Pratik Chorge/HT PHOTO)

Metropolitan Commissioner SVR Srinivas confirmed the same to Hindustan Times on Thursday.

“Our planning division, which looks at regional development and financing, will be working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to draft the MMR Climate Action Plan. UNEP has already given their consent for the project. Our objective is to assess the carrying capacity of the larger Mumbai metropolitan area. We will then incorporate the study’s findings while planning various development projects, as the entire region is anticipated to grow at a rapid pace in coming years and it needs to be sustainable,” Srinivas said.

Unlike the MCAP, which estimated the total carbon footprint of activities in two districts (Mumbai city and suburbs) measuring around 480 sq km, the MMR-CAP will measure the total ecological burden from various activities across an area of 6,328 sq. km, consisting of eight other municipalities including Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi- Nizampur, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar and Panvel, in addition to several municipal councils and over 1,000 villages in Thane, Raigad and Palghar.

“When the MCAP came out, many experts said it is not enough to simply have a climate plan for Mumbai city and suburbs alone, because pollution and climate impacts do not respect administrative boundaries. We have been considering for a while now to have a sustainable planning document to guide the expansion of the MMR. The MMR-CAP will be exactly that,” Srinivas added. He was reluctant, however, to elaborate on specific details about the methodology that will be adopted for the study, the time frame and budget for it, and the UNEP’s role. “It is all still in an early stage,” he said.

Officials did confirm, however, that the MMR-CAP will not have a ‘net zero’ target on the lines of the MCAP, which ambitiously aims to make Mumbai a carbon neutral city by 2050, twenty years ahead of India’s nationally determined target. The MCAP marked the first-ever stock-taking of Mumbai’s emissions by a government body and estimated the city’s total emissions in 2019 to be 34.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2Eq) greenhouse gases. A staggering 71% of this load can be attributed to the energy sector, followed by transportation which contributed 24%. The remaining 5% was attributed to the waste sector.

However, as the MCAP itself reveals, a truly net zero carbon balance for the city is virtually impossible within this time frame. “In the ambitious scenario, emissions are forecasted to reduce by 27% by the year 2030 and by 72% by the year 2050 as compared with the emission levels in 2019. This implies that the city will have a residual emission amounting to a 30% gap in meting the 2050 target of net-zero emissions,” the document states.