Mumbai will have a new climate risk assessment study, and the report will be unveiled next year, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) told us a few days ago. It is necessary to get this assessment given the significant changes and massive transformation along Mumbai’s coastline over the past five years, an official told the media. We should have nodded in approval and felt reassured that the city is in the hands of a civic authority that understands climate risks, is a step ahead of what’s coming, and charts the future course of development accordingly.

Instead, most Mumbaikars who took in the news met it with indifference or cynicism; hardly anyone felt reassured. This says a lot about the trust and confidence that the civic body, Asia’s largest with its last annual budget running into nearly Rs 81,000 crore, inspires. The indifference stems from the gap between what the BMC says and does. The cynicism comes from knowing that the gap means doom for the future of Mumbai and watching the BMC drive that engine of doom.

BMC’s Climate Risk Record

Nothing exemplifies this more than the way it has handled the city’s climate risks. The BMC has known these risks for decades; it identified hazard areas back in 2018, and its former commissioner, IS Chahal, elaborated in 2021 on the areas in South Mumbai that might be submerged by the rising sea levels. Even as it conducted, or had access to, studies of the climate risks, it happily issued ecologically unsound and climate-hazardous permissions for redevelopment or new........

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