'India needs $2.4 tn by 2050 for climate-resilient infra'

Current municipal spending is well below the investments needed for climate-resilient, low-carbon intensive infrastructure in Indian cities, which face a triple threat of flooding, water scarcity, and heat, a World Bank report released said on Tuesday.

- Soumya Chatterjee

The report titled ‘Towards Resilient and Prosperous Cities in India’ estimated a minimum investment requirement of $2.4 trillion by 2050 under a conservative scenario of reaching 43% urbanisation by then. In contrast, India spends an average capital investment of $10.6 billion per year (from 2011 to 2018) in the urban infrastructure sector. But importantly, even then, many Indian cities have not been able to spend their capital budgets fully in recent years and need support in increasing implementation capacity, the report said.

While the costs are high, the authors argued the benefits are higher. The report estimated that within 15 years, at least 60% of existing cities can be covered by urban flood risk mitigation measures with investments of about $150 billion. Similarly, implementing heat mitigation actions across Indian cities would increase GDP by up to 0.4% and save up to 130,000 lives a year by 2050. These data points are based on global projections and localised data from 24 Indian cities such as Chennai, Indore, New Delhi, Lucknow, and Surat.