The Rajasthan State Action Plan on Climate Change (RAPCC) is a strategic policy document aimed at enhancing climate resilience while promoting sustainable development across Rajasthan. As one of India’s most climate-vulnerable states—prone to extreme droughts, temperature fluctuations, and scarce water resources—Rajasthan’s RAPCC aligns with India’s National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC) while tailoring actions to state-specific challenges. The RAPCC’s overarching vision is to reduce the vulnerability of ecological, economic, and social systems by enhancing adaptive capacity and promoting resilience-based planning. The RAPCC maps the sectoral vulnerabilities across agriculture, water, energy, health, forests, and urban infrastructure. The state demographic consists of a predominantly rural population heavily reliant on climate-sensitive occupations like agriculture and livestock rearing. Urbanization, population growth, and industrial expansion further intensify climate pressures. The climate change strategies in the RAPCC are organized around seven key thematic missions. For Water Resources, the RAPCC recommends promoting water-use efficiency, expansion of rainwater harvesting, restoring traditional water bodies, and reducing groundwater over-extraction. In Agriculture and Animal Husbandry sector, developing drought-resilient crop varieties, improving irrigation techniques, promoting crop diversification, and enhancing livestock resilience is planned. In Forestry and Biodiversity, policies are based on undertaking afforestation, protection of critical habitats, promoting sustainable forest management, and restoring degraded ecosystems. Further, the RAPCC provides for promoting solar and wind energy, increasing energy efficiency in industries and public infrastructure, implementing green building codes, improving urban drainage, promoting sustainable transport, and enhancing solid waste management. The RAPCC lays out an implementation roadmap involving institutional mechanisms such as the State Steering Committee and sectoral task forces. The financial requirements are mapped alongside policy frameworks to support coordinated adaptation and mitigation efforts. Monitoring and evaluation systems are in place for assessing progress and enabling course correction. Through a participatory, data-driven, and sector-specific approach, the RAPCC aims to safeguard Rajasthan’s developmental trajectory from the disruptive impacts of climate change.
India · 2014-09-04