Aurangabad Acts: First Climate Action Plan of city underway

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad, Aug 12:

A daylong capacity-building workshop on ‘Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory and Vulnerability Assessment’ was organised by Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and Aurangabad Smart City Development Corporation Limited (ASCDCL), with the technical support of World Resources Institute India (WRI India), as a part of the city’s first Climate Action Plan (CAP),

at the ASCDCL headquarters, in Kile Ark, recently.

The AMC administrator and ASCDCL chief executive officer Abhijeet Chaudhari guided the workshop attended by AMC and ASCDCL officers and representatives of parastatal agencies.

The first session focused on the city’s vulnerability assessment and touched upon climate risks and the city’s exposure levels to the same. The challenges of urban heat, air pollution, water scarcity, and urban flooding were discussed in depth as was the impact of these climate risks on urban infrastructure.

The second session focused on the frameworks and tools used to conduct a preliminary analysis of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions for the city. This session elaborated on GHG emissions from key sectors, such as transport, stationary energy, and waste disposal and concluded with the next steps needed to formulate Aurangabad’s CAP.

With more workshops in the offing, the AMC and ASCDCL authorities are focusing on both climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation measures to strengthen the city’s resilience.

It may be noted that the workshop is a part of Maharashtra’s concerted efforts toward achieving net zero emissions by 2050 with 43 cities and urban clusters in the state pledging to achieve this objective.