How Climate Weeks Are Emerging as Platforms for Citizen-Led Climate Action in India

Mumbai Climate Week (MCW) 2026, scheduled to be held from February 17-19, is a first-of-its-kind, citizen-led climate movement which positions climate action as everyday citizen action, driven by neighbourhoods, schools, youth groups, housing societies and civil society, with a model that can be replicated across Tier-2 cities and the Global South.

The core themes of this climate week include food systems, energy transition and urban resilience.  

Why MCW Matters Now

As climate change is resulting in heat stress, flooding, water scarcity, food inflation, waste and health issues across Indian cities, initiating meaningful conversations becomes imperative. What makes Mumbai Climate Week different is that it reframes climate action as citizen action, enabling neighbourhoods, youth groups, schools, housing societies, innovators and civil society to drive bottom-up climate solutions. The model is being designed as a replicable template for Tier-2 cities across India and the Global South.

Climate weeks provide a structured yet flexible space for dialogue, capacity-building and showcasing innovative solutions to support the intergovernmental process and urgent, inclusive and coordinated climate action.

Elaborating on Mumbai Climate Week’s vision, Shishir Joshi, CEO & Co- Founder, Project Mumbai Founder, Mumbai Climate Week, said that the Mumbai Climate Week is not attempting to replicate global climate summits or position itself as another policy-heavy convening. Its ambition is more specific and arguably more focused aimed at becoming a city-anchored climate action platform where global climate challenges are examined through the lens of lived urban realities.

“Mumbai is not a symbolic host. It is a climate frontline facing heat stress, flooding, air pollution, informal housing pressures and energy transition challenges on a large scale. MCW uses this context deliberately,” added Joshi.

He further added that the platform focuses on sectors where climate risk, development priorities, and citizen livelihoods intersect most sharply in India and across the Global South by structuring conversations around urban resilience, food systems and energy transition.

“Globally, MCW seeks relevance not by scale alone, but by transferability. The emphasis is on solutions, governance models, and financing approaches that can travel from Mumbai to other Indian cities and onward to cities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America facing similar constraints,” he added.

When asked about takeaways that Mumbai Climate Week has drawn from other established climate weeks like New York or London, Joshi shared that he believes that visibility does not automatically translate into impact. While large forums succeed in convening power but often have a lesser impact when it comes to connecting deliberation with implementation at grassroots levels, particularly for cities in developing economies.

He explained how MCW has addressed the drawbacks of international engagement, thematic depth, and multi-stakeholder participation while incorporating their advantages. MCW's programming is systems-oriented, emphasising the interplay between markets, communities, finance, and policy, in contrast to compartmentalised discussions. The significance of continuity is a crucial lesson. MCW functions as a hub-and-spoke model, bolstered by year-round engagements, pilot discussions, and follow-on collaborations to guarantee action pathways beyond the main convening.

Moving it away from surface level conversations and extending its impact to smaller Indian cities and the Global South can actually help realise climate weeks their purpose, elaborating on this, he said, “MCW recognises that unless people see themselves in the climate story, solutions will struggle to travel or endure.”

He highlighted that large cities often have institutional capacity that smaller cities lack, but citizen realities are remarkably consistent across the Global South, heat exposure, access to clean air, food security, energy reliability and livelihood vulnerability. These shared emotions and everyday pressures create a common language across cities, regardless of administrative strength. 

MCW builds frameworks independent of high administrative capacity by centering conversations around the lived experiences of outdoor workers, informal communities, farmers, neighbourhood groups and young people. These are models that smaller cities can adapt, considering their budget limitations.

Importantly, MCW also expands how climate conversations are held. The use of food, cinema, art, sport and culture makes the climate crisis something personal and relatable, rather than an abstract concept. Film screenings, food-focused dialogues or community art interventions have the power to spark conversations in ways that technical reports often can't—especially with young people and informal communities.

Citizen Action at Core

Citizen participation changes the fundamental character of the solutions that are created. It prioritises affordability, usability, and resilience over showcasing technologies. This focus ensures solutions are shaped by how people live, eat, move, work, and cope not just by what is technologically possible. This is what makes the ideas emerging from MCW relevant not only to Mumbai but also to Tier-II and Tier-III Indian cities and peer cities globally that operate under fiscal and governance constraints similar to those across the Global South.

Impact is measured using qualitative and directional indicators, such as whether citizen input significantly influences agenda-setting and solution design; whether partnerships established at MCW advance toward pilots, policy alignment, or funding discussions; whether innovations presented are embraced, tested, or improved in practical settings; and whether discussions result in more transparent implementation pathways for cities and communities. As a result, the longevity of citizen-led climate action, the continuity of collaboration, and follow-through are more important indicators of MCW's success than the three days of gathering.

Meanwhile, another climate-focused convening, Delhi Climate Innovation Week is expected to take place from February 20 till 27, 2026. The Delhi Climate Innovation Week intends to provide platform to initiate conversations that could make impact on a grassroots level.

Commenting on a having a realistic timeline for a climate week to establish itself as a trusted climate platform, Pratap Raju, Founding Partner, Climate Collective said that despite starting later, the country’s speed of reaching scale is faster. “For instance, we started our solar mission, two decades after Germany. That has grown quite a bit. Even in the climate tech space where I work, there were no climate tech start-ups 10 years ago when I started but now it has exploded."

According to the Observer Research Foundation, in the past decade, over 2,600 climate tech start-ups were registered in India.

“So, I don't think it'll take as much time, mainly because the nature of India and the amount of people who work in sustainability is actually quite large,” he stated.

He further noted that as the urgency of the problem is much stronger now than it was 20 years ago. Back then, climate was primarily discussed at international forums. In cities like New York, where he used to live 30 years ago, it was barely talked about, perhaps even once in an entire year. Today, however, conversations about climate are much more common, even in India, with people noticing unusual rains and heat.

“I think the awareness amongst people is much higher, so it may not take much time at all to become a trusted platform,” he asserted.   

While the other climate weeks have gained influence by anchoring themselves to governments and finance, a citizen-first initiative is a better strategy because if you don’t root it in people engaging in climate, it is unsure how strong the business is, believes Raju.

In climate, one can work on many factors in isolation, for example, efficiency in industry, that has a positive climate impact, or reducing water particularly in areas like coal plants, that consume a lot of water, or data centres. Involving citizens in the conversation, however, ensures agreement on common objectives and unites the various stakeholders required to tackle such issues. According to him, these problems are almost always the result of citizen involvement, especially from those who are directly impacted by the actions, and are rarely internal to any one organisation, regardless of size.

“That is a pretty strong strategy, to also engage with citizens,” he asserted.

Converting dialogues happening at a larger stage to a grassroots level impact, stated that we've actually won some of the biggest fights in climate already especially in over the last two decades. If you look at the renewable energy plants that are built in India, the vast majority of new power plants for over a decade in India are solar and wind plants. So, that is one of the biggest fights, the biggest sources of emissions already established for 10 years plus in India, as what we should do.

According to Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the total renewable energy capacity added during the year (till November) is 44.51 GW which is nearly double as compared to the 24.72 GW during the same period last year.  The total renewable energy installed capacity has reached 253.96 GW in November, 2025 which is an increase of over 23% as compared to the 205.52 GW in November 2024.

While the EV transition is taking time, business models are coming up and action is happening on the ground. He emphasised that any meaningful action involves many stakeholders, not just the power players. For example, in agriculture, addressing emissions is not straightforward. It requires engaging with financing systems and multiple other stakeholders.

Changes in agriculture also carries political implications. Going forward, implementing solutions outside the power and mobility sectors will become more complex. Many stakeholders will need to be engaged. For instance, using more sustainable material for construction could significantly reduce carbon emissions over the next 20 years, given India's infrastructure boom. This requires engagement with commercial banks, financiers and other ecosystems that are not traditionally involved in sustainability or climate action.

Building Trusted Climate Platforms

Speaking about defining success for Climate Weeks in India, Raju said, “It's hard to define success because this is a long battle. True success is when, despite the difficulty of engaging with so many stakeholders, a Climate Week becomes an accepted magnet or hub in which people can coordinate and come together.”

He noted that meaningful engagement is difficult without in-person interaction. “We can do Zoom calls, but real understanding still requires people meeting face-to-face. If a Climate Week becomes an accepted hub, it will make coordination much easier for everyone,” he concluded.