BENGALURU: The Research Council of Norway has launched a new project titled ‘CLIMATRANS - Coping with Climate: Assessing Transport Sector Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Indian Cities’ which will be implemented during the next three years. CLIMATRANS is an interdisciplinary project that will assess impacts of climate change on urban areas in India and develop mitigation and adaptation strategies for the transport sector.
Institute of Transport Economics and Meteorological Institute in Norway and four Indian research institutions - The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, New Delhi), School of Planning and Architecture (SPA, New Delhi), Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bengaluru) and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) - will collaborate in this research. Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru have been selected as case cities for further research.
Bengaluru is one of the fastest growing cities in Asia with a thousand vehicles being registered every day and in 15 years, the city is projected to have 4.7 million cars on its roads, pointed out Prof Ashish Verma, CLIMATRANS project partner from IISc, Bengaluru. “It is important to understand the consequences of these trends in terms of climate change mitigation and adaptation so that policy makers in the city have a clear scientific perspective while framing transport policy towards a sustainable city,” he said.
Dr Farideh Ramjerdi, Institute of Transportation Economics, Norway, who is the CLIMATRANS project manager, said, “It is important to study Indian cities in terms of both their present as well as projected transport sector contributions to local emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of future climate change. Climate change might already have caused adverse effects on different settlements in India.”
