Telangana sets up climate centre for cities, launches urban climate atlas
Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Thursday inaugurated the State Climate Centre for Cities, an institutional initiative established under the City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS) Programme 2.0, with the aim of strengthening climate-responsive urban planning and accelerating sustainable development across Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in the State.
The centre was inaugurated by the Commissioner and Director of Municipal Administration (CDMA), T. K. Sreedevi, at the CDMA office in Hyderabad. She also launched the Telangana Urban Climate Atlas, a digital platform designed to provide spatial information on urban climate risks and vulnerabilities. The initiative is described as a first-of-its-kind arrangement under the CITIIS programme.
The centre will serve as Telangana’s nodal platform for climate-related knowledge, data management and technical support to municipalities. Its stated mandate includes climate data management, greenhouse gas emissions assessment, climate risk and vulnerability studies, and the preparation of climate action plans.
It will also focus on key urban challenges such as heat islands and urban flooding, while supporting capacity building within municipal bodies and integrating climate considerations into urban policies, infrastructure development and day-to-day municipal decision-making.
According to the CDMA, the centre will assist Urban Local Bodies in preparing their own climate action plans and help consolidate these into an Integrated State Climate Action Plan. This is intended to give the State a single, coordinated framework rather than a set of disconnected local plans.
The centre will additionally support climate-responsive budgeting, enabling municipalities to identify climate-related expenditure in their existing budgets and to align future investments with sustainability goals. Officials said this would help cities understand how much they already spend on climate-relevant activities and where gaps exist.
The newly launched Telangana Urban Climate Atlas brings together spatial data on climate risks, vulnerabilities, emissions and urban services on a single platform. By allowing municipal officials to visualise climate risks geographically, the atlas is expected to facilitate evidence-based planning, identification of vulnerable areas, prioritisation of investments and the development of localised climate action strategies, a press release said.
The initiative comes in the context of rapid urbanisation across India. Cities are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and are simultaneously among the most exposed to climate impacts, including prolonged heat, erratic rainfall and urban flooding. Municipal bodies, which are responsible for much of the country’s local planning and civic infrastructure, have often lacked the granular data and technical capacity needed to assess these risks or to plan for them systematically.
CITIIS is a programme implemented under the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs with international development partners, aimed at supporting urban local bodies in taking up innovative and sustainable infrastructure projects. Its second phase places emphasis on climate action and circular economy approaches in cities.
With the new centre, Telangana will have a dedicated institutional point of contact for climate data, technical assistance and planning support for its municipalities. Officials indicated that the centre’s work would feed into both State-level policy and individual city-level plans, with the atlas acting as a common reference point for officials across departments.
Further details on the centre’s staffing, budget and timelines were not immediately available. The State is expected to outline these as the centre begins operations.
