Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) has identified 140 existing and planned projects across government departments that contribute towards reducing threat from climate change and environmental degradation.

These projects across the environment, health, energy, disaster management, urban development, transport and industries departments address seven sustainable development goals related to climate change and environment in a broad manner. Though they most frequently addressed health and water and energy, those least frequently addressed were environment and climate change. ADRI member-secretary Shaibal Gupta said: "This tends to support the common finding that many climate change and environment projects are concerned with normal issues of development and benefits from project."

The revelations came at a workshop organised by ADRI on "Bihar state action plan on climate change financing framework" in Patna on Saturday. The state action plan on climate change (SAPCC) is the primary tool for planning to meet climate change, and most states in the country, including Bihar, have prepared them under the leadership of the ministry for environment, forest and climate change.

SAPCC describes climate change projections for the state and lists the priority actions the state government proposes to undertake to adapt to it as well as to contribute to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Environment and finance experts taking part in the workshop pointed out that Bihar had done some provisional work on financial implications of the SAPCC. But it had mostly been done on ad hoc basis.

"Bihar has considered the potential cost of full implementation of an action with little consideration about the level of resources that are available either from the state budget or from central schemes and new opportunities from climate fund," said one of the experts attending the workshop.

Presenting a paper on "History of Climate Change", Kit Nicholson, climate control expert from Department for International Development (DFID) - Climate Change Innovation Programme (CCIP), pointed out that adaptation for climate change is much more difficult than the mitigation process.

"For a state like Bihar, adaptation is the biggest concern as it might impact economic growth. Vulnerability assessment should be done," Nicholson added.

Abinash Mohanty from ADRI, who helped prepare the state action plan, gave a presentation on the use of financing frameworks for climate change action plans.

Participants agreed the action plan document must be modified so that action for adaptation and those for mitigation were separated. They suggested people's participation in the actions related to climate change must be ensured and awareness spread.

ADRI director Prabhant P. Ghosh and Water and Water and Land Management Institute professor M.D. Singh were present at the workshop.