Maharashtra Climate Planning To Support Resilient Cities
Maharashtra’s climate governance is shifting from strategy articulation toward mobilising capital for resilient infrastructure, as the state unveils a suite of initiatives designed to convert ambitious environmental plans into well-structured, bankable projects. With urban areas like Pune, Nagpur and Aurangabad facing intensifying climate impacts — from heat stress to flood volatility — policymakers and urban planners are wrestling with a perennial challenge: how to attract sustained investment for long-term adaptation and low-carbon growth.
Maharashtra’s latest Climate Finance Access and Mobilisation Strategy (CFAMS) — launched at Mumbai Climate Week — signals a recalibration of the state’s climate action approach, laying out mechanisms to channel public and private capital toward urban climate and resilience projects. The strategy emerges against a backdrop where over 44 cities have pledged net-zero targets by 2050, yet many lack investable project pipelines to match their planning ambitions.Historically, municipal climate action plans have struggled to translate into deliverable infrastructure programmes, largely due to gaps in early-stage project scoping, risk assessment and financial structuring — stages that are often resource-intensive and technically demanding. Without such preparatory work, cities find it difficult to meet the documentation and due diligence standards required by large funding mechanisms such as the Urban Infrastructure Development Fund or other blended finance instruments.
The CFAMS aims to address this shortfall by fostering an enabling ecosystem that supports project preparation at scale. Central to this approach is the establishment of a Climate Finance Dashboard, designed to enhance transparency in climate expenditure across government departments and help investment stakeholders track and engage with emerging opportunities. A Climate Finance Facilitation Desk — proposed under the new strategy — would strengthen coordination, standardise feasibility assessments and embed climate-risk evaluation into capital allocation processes.Urban development experts say such institutional mechanisms can help municipalities overcome fragmentation between planning and finance. “Cities are generating robust climate plans, but converting them into bankable assets requires dedicated support in structuring, prioritising and bundling projects,” notes a senior planner involved in climate finance. This shift reflects an emerging realisation that climate action must be integrated with economic priorities to attract sustained investment and catalyse structural change in urban systems.
The emphasis on bankability also aligns with national policy directions. Under India’s recent G20 presidency, sustainable finance working groups underscored the need for project preparation facilities at state and local levels to strengthen investment pipelines — a principle that Maharashtra’s framework seeks to operationalise.For Maharashtra’s urban economies, the implications are far-reaching. A credible pipeline of climate-aligned, investment-ready projects can enhance resiliency in infrastructure sectors such as water, mobility, waste management and energy systems — while potentially stimulating local job creation and fostering equitable access to climate-smart services.
Yet analysts caution that realising this potential will require sustained institutional capacity building, improved data ecosystems and a concerted focus on inclusive planning that embeds gender-responsive and community-centric elements into project design.As Maharashtra navigates the next phase of climate action, the transition from plan to project will be a litmus test not just for institutional ambition, but for creating resilient, equitable cities that balance development imperatives with environmental imperatives.
