Amid city residents grappling with rising pollution, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), for the first time, is set to publish a ‘Green Budget Book’ — an exclusive climate budget — for the city. Detailing the civic body’s plans to combat the pollution menace, a separate climate budget is currently being developed and will be launched, starting next year.
According to municipal commissioner and state-appointed administrator Iqbal Singh Chahal, the BMC has signed an MoU with the Oslo Municipality, which will be guiding the civic body in implementing the climate budget.
Responding to questions, Chahal said, “We will be publishing a separate green budget every year. As of now, we are yet to start the process and we will be presenting this budget by next year in 2025.”
“A similar budget has been implemented in the city of Oslo and, therefore, we have signed an MoU with their municipal body which is guiding us in implementing this budget in Mumbai,” he told reporters on Friday.
While the civic body is yet to introduce the green budget book, no mention of separate funds for the environment department was made in the budget document. However, when contacted, officials from the civic environment department said that an allocation of Rs 25 crore — akin to previous year — has been made this year as well.
This year, in a bid to tackle the bad air that the city has been reeling under on several days, the civic budget revived the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), which helmed by Aaditya Thackeray and despite being launched in March 2022 found no mention in last year’s budget.
Besides implementing the MCAP at ward level, the BMC has said that key push will be given to developing citywide gardens as well as advancing projects like the Renewable Hybrid Energy and Waste to Energy.
Last year, the BMC coined and allocated a fund of Rs 25 crore for the policy — Mumbai’s ‘Air Pollution Mitigation Action Plan’ (APMAP), under which the civic body aimed to curb air-pollution concentration level across various sectors, initiate multi-level monitoring strategy for the city as well as adapt a decentralised planning system for bringing out measures.
Speaking on last year’s climate plans, senior officials said that special efforts had been taken to achieve ‘net zero’ goal. “Notable achievements include the issuance of MAPMP, the establishment of task forces at ward level and the enforcement of construction guidelines featuring measures like dust screens and water sprinkling,” said officials.
Meanwhile, the APMAP plan which aimed to install 14 smog towers — two towers each in the seven municipal zones of the city — to purify the air within a one-kilometer radius is yet to see the light of the day. However, one year on the civic body is still studying the mechanism and evaluating the best way to implement the system in the city.
Another system, the ‘Hyper Local Monitoring System’ which was proposed under the previous plan is also being evaluated by a team of experts at IIT – Kanpur who are currently studying the feasibility of the technology in Mumbai.