Climate Asia Conference calls for people centric climate action

New Delhi: With climate impacts intensifying across India, leaders at Climate Asia’s Annual Conference 2026 called for faster, more coordinated action to scale community-driven solutions and bridge the gap between policy ambition and on-ground execution.

Hosted by Climate Asia at the India Habitat Centre, Delhi, nearly 350 participants, including policymakers, practitioners, and community leaders came together to reshape India’s climate discourse.

The two-day event, themed “Building India’s Climate Ecosystem: Innovation, Talent, Leadership,” signaled a shift from fragmented approaches to a more integrated, people-centric climate strategy.

Opening the conversation, Satyam Vyas of Climate Asia underscored the human dimension of climate change.

“When we talk about climate, we talk about data and degrees. But climate is really about a mother deciding whether to plant this season, a worker choosing between heat and income, a child breathing air that shouldn’t exist. Until we make that the centre of our work, we are solving the wrong problem,” he said.

Speakers repeatedly emphasized the importance of collaboration and systems thinking. Shrashtant Patara of Development Alternatives highlighted the need for partnerships across sectors.

“At Development Alternatives, we have always believed in triads, people, planet and prosperity… the urgent need is to put together collaborative platforms that leverage entrepreneurship, institutions and technology to change systems at scale,” he noted.

The conference featured multiple panel discussions addressing climate resilience, livelihoods, and energy transition. Sameer Shisodia of Rainmatter Foundation stressed the importance of community-first approaches, saying, “We are not walking into a water-stressed place; we are walking into somebody’s home… the real engine is the people: their knowledge, resources, and entrepreneurial energy.”

Delivering a keynote, Deepali Khanna of The Rockefeller Foundation framed climate change as an immediate economic and social challenge. “The real question is not whether we act. It is whether we can move from urgency to execution fast enough,” she said, calling for faster decision-making and scaling of proven solutions.

Actor and UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador Dia Mirza brought a human lens to the crisis. “The earth is not speaking to us in predictions anymore. It is speaking to us now, through lived realities we can no longer ignore,” she said, urging stronger storytelling and greater support for grassroots climate leadership.

Voices from the ground also took center stage. Sarika Santosh Pawar, a rural entrepreneur from Maharashtra, shared her journey of transformation through sustainable farming and clean energy. “What started as a struggle for stability became a mission… to empower 1,000+ women to become self-reliant,” she said.

Discussions also explored women-led resilience, financial tools like parametric insurance, and India’s evolving energy landscape. Experts stressed that governance, local participation, and state-level implementation would be critical to achieving scale.

Summing up the deliberations, Sonya Fernandes of Ashraya Hastha Trust emphasized the importance of responsiveness in program design. “Community consultations are essential… sometimes a farm pond may serve small farmers better, but do our programme models have the agility to respond? That is where the soul of a programme comes in,” she said.

The conference concluded with a clear message: while the building blocks for climate solutions already exist across India, the challenge lies in connecting them through stronger alignment, urgency, and accountability.