Building the Future: Empowering India’s Smaller Cities for Climate Action
Empowering India’s smaller cities and making them able to weather the worsening effects of climate change will be imperative as CO₂ emissions continue to rise.
India’s urbanization trajectory is set to be historic. With its urban population projected to increase by over 400 million people by 2050 (accounting for thirty-five percent of global urban growth during the same period), the country’s cities will continue to proliferate and swell. Urbanization is a key driver of India’s emissions, which stood at 3.8 billion tons of CO₂ in 2022, making it the third-largest emitter in the world (Global Carbon Atlas, 2023). The sustainability of India’s urban transition is therefore of global relevance, and has the potential to avoid locking-in vast quantities of carbon emissions – particularly in its rapidly growing smaller and medium cities (SMCs), where today’s decisions will establish development pathways for the coming decades.
If these growing cities follow the high-carbon trajectories of their larger counterparts – relying on energy-intensive construction, unregulated sprawl, and fossil-fuel-driven cooling – India’s emissions will surge. Conversely, a well-planned urban transition could lock in low-carbon growth, avoiding as much as one billion tons of CO₂ emissions by 2050 (IEA, 2022). Meanwhile, climate change continues unabated, making these cities extremely prone to its devastating effects. India ranks as the seventh-most vulnerable country to climate change, making a two-pronged approach to climate action – focusing on both mitigation and adaptation – crucial to ensuring this transition balances economic interest with climate considerations.
Empowering India’s Smaller Cities: SMCs
Early headway in urban climate action has occurred predominantly in large-scale metropolises like Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai, leaving India’s SMCs in the lurch. The majority of India’s urban growth and associated emissions will come from these SMCs over the coming decades. The Coalition for Urban Transitions estimates that over half of India’s climate mitigation potential through to 2050 comes from cities with less than one million inhabitants – small cities by Indian standards. The number of cities with over a million people is expected to rise from forty-two in 2014 to sixty-eight by 2030. Places like Indore, Surat, Bhubaneswar, and Kochi are growing at breakneck speed, often absorbing rural migrants displaced by climate change and economic shifts.
Unlike larger metropolises where much of the infrastructure is already constructed, SMCs are building their roads, buildings, and power grids for the first time. The choices they make today will define India’s urban emissions for decades. This presents a critical window of opportunity: the right choices now can embed low-carbon growth and resilience from the outset. The World Bank notes that “nearly 70 percent of the urban infrastructure needed by 2047 is yet to be built,” highlighting the immense potential for climate-conscious development.
However, many SMCs lack the technical expertise, financial resources, and governance structures needed to implement ambitious climate action. Rapid urbanization has led to increased population density, presenting substantial challenges for service delivery systems and existing living conditions, let alone long-term climate planning. They are also significantly less involved in international networks (such as ICLEI or C40) that can help plug capacity gaps, despite needing the support to pioneer and test their own place-based approaches.
Empowering India’s Smaller Cities: The World Over
This issue isn’t specific to India, and is being witnessed the world over. It’s not all bad news though; certain SMCs stand out as global lighthouse case studies in how to properly design and execute climate action and resilience plans. Through a participatory process called Transitions Management, Görlitz and Ludwigsburg, Germany have set ambitious goals to achieve climate neutrality by incorporating them into integrated urban development plans. Similarly, Ithaca in the United States was the first U.S. city to commit to full building decarbonization by 2030 through a combination of technological and urban planning interventions.
These cities were able to succeed because of a certain degree of autonomy and local leadership – areas where India’s SMCs face structural constraints. SMCs are typically governed by Municipal Councils that are far less independent than the Municipal Corporations of larger cities. Despite attempts by the central government to devolve responsibilities to Urban Local Bodies, significant fragmentation thereby arises with multiple agencies at the local, state, and central levels responsible for various aspects of city management. For example, solar rooftop installations and energy-efficient buildings are critical for reducing urban emissions. But building codes are regulated by Municipal Bodies, while electricity distribution and land fall under the responsibility of state utilities. Transportation, another major driver of urban emissions, is also a state subject.
The availability of low-cost financing is another significant hurdle. A World Bank study underlined that around seventy-two percent of urban infrastructure funding is provided by state and central government agencies, while just five percent comes from private sector sources. Without local financial autonomy, cities are struggling to fund climate initiatives. But by building technical capacity and de-risking investments, SMCs can attract commercial financing for climate-resilient infrastructure while bolstering their own fiscal independence. Mechanisms like municipal green bonds and public-private partnerships (which require a certain minimum level of technical capability within city administrations) remain underutilized but could play a transformative role in funding low-carbon urban development.
Several government programs have emerged to support this transition, including the ClimateSmart Cities Assessment Framework, PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana) low-cost housing scheme, and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation. However, many of these remain project-based, focusing on individual low-carbon infrastructure projects rather than driving systemic change. Sustainable and impactful climate action requires shifting mindsets, governance structures, and financial incentives at the city level.
Empowering India’s Smaller Cities: Summing It Up
To ensure that climate action is embedded in urban planning, India must integrate net-zero strategies into municipal budgets and master plans, rather than treating them as add-ons. Increasing civic participation, bolstering local government autonomy, building technical expertise, and fostering participation in international climate networks will be critical here. The UN-Habitat’s Sustainable Cities Integrated Approach Pilot, in partnership with India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, is a promising start. If scaled up, such initiatives could help transform India’s SMCs into global models of low-carbon, climate-resilient development – turning one of the world’s fastest urban transitions into an opportunity for sustainability rather than a climate liability.
Raghav Anand is an urban decarbonization and climate policy specialist, and when he wrote this article, he was working as a German Chancellor Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development
Image: Shutterstock/Bhatakta Manav