India’s gram panchayats need climate plans

This article is authored by Neeraja Kudrimoti, practice director, Climate Action, Transform Rural India.

Across rural India, the climate crisis is no longer a future risk, it is a lived reality. Villages are experiencing falling groundwater levels, erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, declining soil fertility, biodiversity loss, and increasing pressure on livelihoods. Yet, despite these interconnected challenges, village planning often continues to operate through disconnected departmental schemes and annual infrastructure wish lists.

Gram panchayat (HT Archive)

The irony is that the institution best positioned to respond to climate change already exists--the gram panchayat.

Every year, gram panchayats prepare the gram panchayat development plan (GPDP), India's most extensive local planning exercise. But while GPDPs determine investments in roads, water bodies, livelihoods, sanitation, agriculture, and social welfare, climate risks rarely shape how these decisions are made.

A climate plan at the gram panchayat level is, therefore, not about creating another document. It is about helping villages understand their changing landscape and using existing resources, institutions, and schemes to build resilience. Climate action becomes meaningful when it is rooted in local realities, local knowledge, and local governance.

For many panchayats, GPDP preparation has become synonymous with compiling demands under various government schemes. While important, this approach often fragments planning into sectors and departments, making it difficult to address the interconnected nature of climate challenges.

The next generation of GPDPs must move beyond scheme convergence toward landscape convergence. Instead of asking, "Which scheme can fund this activity?" planning should begin by asking, “What does this landscape need to remain productive, resilient, and prosperous over the next decade?”

This shift transforms GPDP from an expenditure plan into a village transition plan, one that considers ecology, livelihoods, health, culture, governance, and climate resilience together.

A climate-responsive GPDP requires both diagnosis and demonstration.

The first pillar is diagnosis through the Landscape Character Assessment Tool (LCAT), which helps communities understand their village as a living landscape before planning begins. Rather than viewing development through isolated sectors, LCAT assesses villages across multiple dimensions including water, forests, agriculture, biodiversity, energy, waste, livelihoods, governance, and social institutions. It helps identify risks, opportunities, and local strengths that conventional planning often overlooks.

The second pillar is demonstration through initiatives such as Mor Gaon Mor Pani in Chhattisgarh. Working across hundreds of village clusters, the programme showcases how water security can be strengthened through Panchayati Raj Institution leadership, groundwater monitoring, village water budgeting, GIS-based planning, and community ownership.

Together, these approaches point toward a new future for GPDP, one where planning is rooted in ecological realities and led by communities themselves.

The experience of Barchegondi village in Kanker district offers valuable lessons.

The village faces many of the challenges now becoming common across rural India. Groundwater levels have declined. Chemical-intensive farming has hardened soils and reduced organic matter. Forest edges have receded. Plastic waste increasingly finds its way into household fuel systems. Climate variability has made livelihoods more uncertain.

Yet the village also possesses remarkable strengths. Women's Self-Help Groups are active. Youth collectives are organised. Forest-rights holders continue to manage community resources. Livestock populations remain strong. Traditional ecological knowledge survives. Community institutions continue to function.

This dual reality is important. Rural communities are not simply victims of climate change; they are also repositories of solutions. Viewed through a climate lens, GPDP planning in villages like Barchegondi can support multiple objectives simultaneously.

Reintroducing millets and nutri-cereals alongside paddy can strengthen nutrition while reducing vulnerability to climate shocks. Strengthening livestock-agriculture linkages can improve soil health through organic manure while reducing dependence on costly chemical fertilisers. Women's institutions can guide investments in biogas systems and improved cookstoves, reducing both drudgery and household emissions.

Similarly, community-led approaches to reducing human-wildlife conflict, such as indigenous thorny hedges or beehive fencing can protect crops without harming wildlife. Local processing of forest produce through simple technologies can increase village incomes. Reforestation efforts can prioritise shade-giving indigenous species that lower temperatures in public spaces while supporting biodiversity.

Even cultural practices become part of climate resilience. Traditional festivals, music, and community gatherings strengthen social cohesion, the often overlooked foundation of collective action during environmental stress.

These examples are significant not because they are innovative projects, but because they demonstrate a different planning philosophy.

Climate resilience cannot be achieved through isolated interventions. A water conservation structure alone will not solve a groundwater crisis. A plantation drive alone will not restore ecological balance. A livelihood scheme alone will not reduce vulnerability.

What villages need is a transition pathway.

A climate-integrated GPDP enables Panchayats to see how water, forests, agriculture, energy, livelihoods, culture, and governance interact as part of one system. It encourages investments that generate multiple benefits simultaneously, improving incomes, restoring ecosystems, strengthening institutions, and enhancing resilience.

In this model, development is not measured only by assets created. It is measured by healthier soils, secure water systems, thriving biodiversity, reduced drudgery for women, stronger local economies, and communities capable of adapting to future shocks.

This represents a fundamental shift from implementing schemes to managing transitions.

India's climate response cannot succeed through national policies alone. It must be built village by village, landscape by landscape.

Fortunately, the foundations already exist. The GPDP framework is institutionalised. Panchayats have constitutional authority. Community institutions such as SHGs, Village Organisations, Forest Rights Committees, and youth groups are active across the country. Government programmes already invest billions annually in natural resource management, livelihoods, agriculture, and infrastructure.

What is needed now is a new planning lens.

Climate-Integrated GPDP offers precisely that opportunity. It helps villages move from fragmented activities to long-term ecological transition. It enables local governments to become stewards of landscapes rather than implementers of schemes. Most importantly, it recognises rural communities as partners in building climate resilience, not merely beneficiaries of development.

Barchegondi's story reminds us that the answers to climate adaptation are often already present within villages themselves. The challenge is creating planning systems capable of seeing them.

When GPDP begins with the landscape, climate action becomes local development. And when local development strengthens ecosystems, livelihoods, and community institutions together, climate resilience becomes not just possible, but inevitable.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Neeraja Kudrimoti, practice director, Climate Action, Transform Rural India.