How to tackle complexity in urban climate resilience? Negotiating climate science, adaptation and multi-level governance in India

in both the 12th schedule (list of ULB functions) and the ongoing urban policies and pro- grammes, there is little institutional attention on creating adequate hard climate infrastructure and equipment or trained technical and managerial staff for building resilience, be it in the state line departments or the ULBs. Merely adding climate change to their existing organiza- tional mandate without provision of additional staff and funds poses a range of governing chal- lenges [70]. In addition, technical capacities on urban resilience need to be built for all local stakeholders including the public representatives, private sector, non-governmental organiza- tions, civil society organizations and the community at large. For instance, Surat established the Urban Health Climate Resilience Centre (UHCRC) and Surat Climate Change Trust (SCCT) as umbrella institutions [71] to organize all stakeholders and concerned departments on climate agenda. There is a lengthy discourse on the financial condition of Indian cities. The availability of funds to finance climate projects remains an unceasing challenge in Indian cities [72]. The ULBs who have to take decisions and governance measures, are financially challenged and lack adequate resources to even carry out normal functions properly [73]. India’s annual bud- getary investments in urban sector is about 1.5–1.7 per cent of the country’s GDP compared with the Asia’s average of 5.7 per cent, grossly falling short of requirements and explains the persistence of huge infrastructure shortages across cities and towns despite infrastructure

development being central to mission programmes such as the Smart Cities and AMRUT [74]. Public financing continues to be the principal mode of funding urban infrastructure with lim- ited role of municipal bonds, land value capture and private sector investments. The constraints imposed by weaknesses in existing urban public finance institutions complicates envisioning the smooth pooling of blended finance from multiple sources across multiple scales [75]. Never- theless, there is a discernible gap in: (a) integration of climate resilience provisions in national urban mission programmes that can assist funding adaptation oriented local development proj- ects, (b) routing of urban resilience investments from district disaster mitigation funds, green cess in environment and energy, and the penalties imposed on environmental violations by the National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court of India, (c) sourcing of non-governmental funds from private sector, land monetization and infrastructure bonds 4.2. Simulating local climate scenarios The simulating (downscaling & mapping) climate scenarios involves downscaling of global cli- mate models for two Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP): RCP 8.5 and RCP 4.5 over three timelines: short-term (2030s), medium-term (2050s) and long-term (2080s). The result- ing six temperature and precipitation anomaly scenarios are mapped and super-imposed with urban geo-database of cities (location- latitude, longitude) for all regions/ states of India to analyze local urban vulnerabilities, a summary of results follows:

4.2.1. Temperature anomalies. The spatial distribution of future anomalies in maximum mean surface temperature in the country ranges from 1.15 (in 2030) to 4.68 degC (in 2080) and is very similar to patterns of historical average temperature (see Fig 2). The detailed tem- perature anomaly maps for different regions/ states are provided in S2 Appendix. In 2030s, the Western Himalayas particularly north western parts of Jammu & Kashmir will experience increase of 2.3˚C under RCP 8.5. In 2050s, the increase could be as high as 6˚C. In Eastern Himalayas, the temperature rise could range from 1.42˚C in 2030s under RCP 4.5 to 4.48˚C in 2080s under RCP 8.5. The temperature increase is also high in dry and semi-dry regions cover- ing plains and hills of Gujarat and western dry regions of Rajasthan. The change in western dry Rajasthan is predicted to range from 1.63 to 4.6˚C in 2080s and 1.57˚C to 4.46˚C in Gujarat plains and hills under RCP 8.5. The Central plateaus and hills, may experience an increase of PLOS ONE Negotiating complexity of climate science, adaptation and multi-level governance in urban resilience PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253904 July 1, 2021 8 / 21