Additional Chief Secretary of Environment, Climate Change and Forest Department, Government of Tamil Nadu (DOECCF), Smt. Supriya Sahu, IAS, released a Greenhouse Gas (GHG) compendium at the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Summit held on the 8^th and 9^th of December 2022.

The compendium has the GHG inventory reports for the cities of Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Tiruchirappalli for the year 2020-21. It was prepared under the CapaCITIES II project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), with active support from the Commissionerate of Municipal Administration and DOECCF, and the Municipal Corporations of the three cities.

Some of the key findings of the GHG inventories of the three cities are:

The three cities have emissions below the national average of 1.96 tCO2e (2016).

The adoption of several international agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and UN-Habitat’s 2016 New Urban Agenda were watershed moments, wherein the central role of cities, led by municipal administrations, in global climate action was recognised as well as encouraged. Cities can lead climate action by framing strategies and programmes, integrating such actions into ongoing urban development and forging partnerships necessary for effective responses.

This is also applicable to rapidly growing urban centres in Tamil Nadu, where both the state and local governments have been leading with climate action initiatives that have been lauded nationally as well globally and have inspired many stakeholders to initiate and/or scale up actions in their own jurisdictions.

In an effort to support the state government in this endeavour, the CapaCITIES project is working to mainstream and integrate climate actions (adaptation and mitigation) into urban planning processes.  One of the key steps is the development of the GHG emissions inventories, which have been prepared by using ICLEI’s HEAT+ tool and are in accordance with the Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions and its BASIC level reporting that covers Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions from stationary energy use and transportation, as well as Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions from waste.

All three project cities, with support from CapaCITIES project team, engaged with local stakeholders, including line departments, government institutions, power supply agencies, the private sector and other data providers to facilitate the collection of relevant activity data. GHG emissions have been estimated at the city scale (community inventory), as well as separately for municipal operations to enable the municipal administrations to identify specific emission sources in their facilities and buildings, and to lead the demonstration of interventions at these sources.

Dr Satheesh Krishnamoorthy, Professor, UK Open University; Mr Subhashish Dey, Director of Climate Policy Programme, Shakthi Sustainable Energy Foundation; Mr Sankar Narayanan, Managing Director, Srinivasa Waste Management Services; and Mr Emani Kumar, Executive Director, ICLEI South Asia, were among several leaders in the sustainability space who attended the event.