Uttar Pradesh is actively tackling climate change through a comprehensive Climate Action Plan through 2030, which exceeds ₹1.12 lakh crore in estimated cost. Because agriculture remains the state’s primary concern and is heavily dependent on monsoons, the plan focuses heavily on resilience, featuring nine distinct missions encompassing water, forests, energy, and health. Key initiatives include promoting Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), adopting water management practices with the World Bank, and expanding the use of solar-powered irrigation pumps in drought-prone areas like Bundelkhand.
Environment Pulse Desk: Drive through the Bundelkhand countryside and you will see why climate change is a problem for this region. A couple of hundred kilometers to the east, the same story is told by the rivers swelling beyond their banks in the Ganga plain. Uttar Pradesh, which is home to more people than most countries, has much to gain and much to lose from the shifting climate patterns. Policies to address climate change are not new in the state but form a disparate group of initiatives, subsidies, and actions taken over the years. They provide an insight into how a politically powerful state with a significant share of the country’s food production and population is responding to the challenge.
A Plan With Nine Missions
The focus of the state’s climate action plan, which runs through 2030, is agriculture. However, it contains a set of nine different missions, including water, forests, energy, and health. The total cost of the plan exceeds ₹1.12 lakh crore, although funds are expected to come chiefly from the redirection of existing resources to climate change management, with some assistance from external sources. Even if the figures are correct, the very fact of their inclusion in the document indicates that agriculture remains the state’s primary concern.
Farmer Friendly Approaches
For a state like Uttar Pradesh, which has traditionally depended on the vagaries of the monsoon for its farm produce, adapting to a changing climate is inseparable from the question of agriculture. In this context, the most apparent changes are related to crops and their varieties, as farmers try to find more resilient options with better yields. The promotion of Direct Seeded Rice, a water-saving method that allows for easier mechanization of rice growing, is one such example. Together with the World Bank, the state has been supporting the adoption of site-specific water management practices that have proven effective in conserving water in the short term. Elsewhere, farmers in Bundelkhand and other drought-prone regions are increasingly using solar-powered pumps, often with significant subsidies from government programs, to irrigate their fields. Not only does it reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, but it also allows them to sell the electricity generated by the pumps to the grid.
Sizing Up Solar
The emphasis on energy is understandable given the scale of the challenge, but it appears that the state has overestimated the role of solar power. The target of 22 GW by 2026-27 (or thereabouts) presupposes that it will come in a variety of forms, from large-scale projects to residential and commercial installations. As the state’s energy budget indicates, there is no shortage of enthusiasm for promoting solar power at all levels. However, it is the potential for decentralized solar power that offers the most significant short-term reduction in carbon emissions. It complements the state’s strategy, which also includes developing other forms of renewable energy, such as compressed biogas, bio-coal, and ethanol production.
Water, Forests, and Other Missions
The state’s climate change plan contains a number of other areas that appear to be performing reasonably well. These include water and forest programs, which contain a mixture of traditional and innovative initiatives to conserve and improve forest cover, watershed management, and pond construction for the dual purpose of storing water and creating employment, particularly in tribal areas. Planting trees, which is an important part of the state’s Green UP Mission, has long been a popular activity in the state. It has a bearing on climate change because millions of trees are planted every year through the efforts of ordinary citizens. However, forest rangers and conservationists know that the first decade after planting is critical in determining whether the saplings will grow into strong, healthy trees.
Urban Heat Islands and Municipal Governance
Although rural areas constitute the vast majority of Uttar Pradesh’s climate change management activities, the state’s cities also have their problems with rising temperatures. These are primarily caused by concrete jungles created by unchecked urbanization, which have resulted in the state announcing an Urban Green Policy. Under the World Bank-assisted program, rooftop greening, Miyawaki forests, and green belts will be created in several cities of the state, with Ayodhya’s city-level climate change plan being one of the first to benefit from the initiative. Simultaneously, the state has revised its Heat Wave Action Plan, and municipal wards are beginning to adopt their own climate change strategies, often focusing on solar-powered irrigation pumps and water conservation, clean cooking fuel, and organic farming. Thus, these programs, too, have direct bearing on climate change.
Successes, Shortcomings, and Limitations
It is hard to disagree that the climate change policies currently in place in Uttar Pradesh have produced rather positive results. First, the number of solar plants in the state has grown substantially in recent years, contributing to a reduction in carbon emissions. Similarly, farmers have benefited from water conservation initiatives. In addition, tree-planting campaigns have helped increase forest cover, create jobs for many people in the rural areas, and promote environmental awareness in general. The state has also benefited from external expertise and funding, which has enhanced the credibility of its climate change policies and, by extension, its overall governance. At the same time, there is no doubt that the climate challenges facing the state are enormous and complex; they cut across multiple sectors and require a comprehensive response at both the local and state levels.
Indeed, the very existence of the climate change plan shows that none of the current policies in the state are sufficient to address the scale of the problem. The disparity between the climate profiles and actions of different districts and states highlights the issue of adaptation, with experts pointing to the need for localized strategies. Despite the state’s well-intentioned efforts, its ability to combat climate change is limited by a lack of resources, both financial and otherwise, as well as insufficient administrative and technical expertise at the local level. Furthermore, many of the policies currently in place in Uttar Pradesh are primarily aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change rather than preventing them. Thus, while important, they are only short-term measures. The situation with groundwater is no different, and it is unlikely that the recently introduced measures will significantly reduce the state’s dependence on groundwater in the short term.
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