Environment and Disaster Management › Climate negotiations and finance
हिन्दी — Read in HindiIndia's climate policy: NDCs, net zero and adaptation
India's Nationally Determined Contribution, the State action plans, adaptation from the city to the village, and the forest carbon sink. Prelims has asked about Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.
Foundation note: Net zero 2070 and the National Action Plan on Climate Change
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Adaptation below the State: panchayats
Copy link to Adaptation below the State: panchayatsPrelims and Mains
Adaptation below the State is climate planning by panchayats, which a State may entrust with planning for economic development and social justice.
What it can carry
- Crop diversification
- Rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge
- Reviving water bodies
- Afforestation and social forestry
- Renewable energy and waste management
What stops it
- Weak technical capacity to assess climate risk
- Little local data on rainfall, groundwater and vulnerable groups
- Limited finance
- Plans made as paperwork rather than through Gram Sabha discussion
The gap
- India's adaptation planning is written in the National Action Plan on Climate Change of 2008 and the State Action Plans beneath it, and there it stops.
- There is no planning framework below the State, though climate risk differs from one village to the next.
- Adaptation carries no budget line of its own, so the works are paid for out of existing schemes such as the rural employment guarantee.
The route through panchayats
- The 73rd Constitutional Amendment inserted Part IX, and Article 243G lets a State devolve planning for economic development and social justice to its panchayats.
- The Eleventh Schedule subjects are adaptation subjects: agriculture, minor irrigation, watershed development, social forestry and drinking water.
- The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, carries panchayat law into Scheduled Areas, where the Gram Sabha protects community resources and approves local plans.
- Climate priorities would enter this system through the Gram Panchayat Development Plan.
What changed
8 Sep 2026
- Bela Gram Panchayat in Maharashtra is India's first net zero panchayat.