BHUBANESWAR: Despite India’s focused approach to fighting the climate crisis, the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC) created eight years back to fund the states in fighting this global challenge, is gradually shrinking. As of now close to Rs 600 crore has been released by the Government of India to support adaptation measures in states and Union territories vulnerable to the adverse impact of climate change.
However, information placed before Parliament shows that the grants under NAFCC released to different states and Union territories for implementation of high-priority resilience-building projects in water management, forestry, climate-resilient agriculture and other such areas have drastically declined over the years.
From Rs 118 crore in 2015-16, NAFCC funding came down to around Rs 20 crore in 2022-23. After Rs 118 crore in 2015-16, the Centre set aside Rs 94 crore under the fund for the year 2016-17. In 2017-18, the state and Union territories were supported under the NAFCC grant of Rs 115.36 crore to fight climate change, while in the subsequent year (2018-19) the amount stood at Rs 109 crore. The funding, however, was reduced thereafter.
In 2019-20, the Centre released Rs 33.51 crore under NAFCC to different states, while in 2020-21 and 2021-22, the support was slightly more at around Rs 43 crore and Rs 60 crore respectively, according to a reply by the Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ashwini Kumar Choubey in Lok Sabha. In 2022-23 fiscal, the Centre released around Rs 20.94 crore under NAFCC for five states and one Union territory, while in 2023-24, the grant to be released is yet to be specified. Established in 2015 to meet the cost of adaptation to climate change, NAFCC so far has supported 30 different adaptation projects in the fields of agriculture, water, and forestry in 27 states.
While the dwindling fund size may make things tough in dealing with the challenge in the coming days, analysts point out that the Centre’s financial commitment to fight climate change has grown multifold through budgetary allocations.
In Budget 2023, the Centre announced a capital outlay of Rs 35,000 crore for the energy transitions under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. The outlay of Rs 19,700 crores for the newly launched Green Hydrogen Mission is also seen as a big push in the direction of promoting green energy. Besides, the launching of Mission LiFE which propagates a list of ideas on lifestyle changes that can be taken up as climate-friendly behaviour, is also seen as India’s initiative to save the planet from the disastrous consequences of climate change.
To fight climate change, the Centre in its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) submitted to UNFCCC under the Paris Agreement also set targets to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% by 2030, from the 2005 level.