Ahmedabad first urban centre to focus on climate budget

On February 25, with the approval of the budget for financial year 2025-26, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) became India's first urban local body to include a separate climate chapter as part of its main budget.

- Soumya Chatterjee

NEW DELHI:

Titled "sustainable and climate budget", the chapter has earmarked over a third of AMC's total budget of ₹15,502 crore—₹5,619.58 crore—for climate action. This outlay will be used to implement a net-zero climate resilient city action plan in line with India's net zero target of 2070, officials said.

The development raises the question of whether the country's other metro cities need to plan similar proposals—the recent ₹17,000 crore budget presented by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on February 13 does not have a mention of any dedicated climate component or singular projects.

Experts have noted that India's cities, although severely impacted by the climate crisis, have been slow to institutionalise climate change and sustainability measures in urban budgets. Cities such as Mumbai, Coimbatore, and Udaipur initially started climate tagging their city budgets and largely cities took up climate action projects as pilots with non-government funding.

In fact, Mumbai allocated around 33% of its capital expenditure for the 2024-25 fiscal in climate-action related projects such as dumpsite restoration, installation of solar panels. However, unlike in Ahmedabad, the Mumbai civic body unveiled the climate budget on world environment day (June 5), to list out "climate relevant" projects planned in the original budget presented in February.

Lessons from Ahmedabad Ahmedabad's plan for 2070, which was prepared in March 2024, estimates a requirement of ₹9,500 crore per year to achieve the net-zero target. AMC is targeting energy savings and renewable energy generation of 310 million units by 2027-28 and mitigating 338,536 tonne carbon dioxide emissions as a result of the actions planned in the budget for the fiscal 2025-26.