Accounting for over 70% of global CO2 emissions, cities are major contributors to climate change. Acknowledging this, urban climate change adaptation and mitigation plans are increasingly developed to make progress toward enhancing climate resilience. While there is consensus that focusing on both adaptation and mitigation is necessary for addressing climate change impacts, better understanding of their interactions is needed to efficiently maximize their potentials. This paper, first, provides a bibliographic analysis to map existing knowledge regarding adaptation-mitigation interactions.

Ecosystem-based adaptation (Eba) uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a larger adaptation strategy to climate change. While the conservation and sustainable development community considers EbA to be a strong method of addressing climate change and its associated challenges, there is still a tendency for policy makers to implement traditional engineering solutions for adaptation, rather than investing in EbA.

The white paper puts forward recommendations for the coordinated enhancement of policies, codes, and regulations. It lay out a framework for guidance for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), and the Review Committees of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for the National Building Code (NBC), to harmonise their actions for healthy affordable housing in urban areas.