Mainstreaming Climate Budgeting in the State of Telangana

Bio : “Rawson Gonsalves, a graduate from the Kautilya School of Public Policy in the year 2023, currently serves as the Deputy Head of the India Programme at Climate Bonds Initiative. In this capacity, he is actively involved in shaping initiatives related to Sustainable Finance in India, while closely collaborating with the Head of South Asia Programmes.

Previously, Rawson worked as a consultant at EY India, where he successfully executed strategic engagements for a wide range of financial institutions. His areas of expertise encompass various aspects, including business advisory, risk management, audit, compliance, change management, and project management. Notably, his focus lies on treasury, trade finance, corporate banking, and global markets. Rawson’s primary area of interest and enthusiasm revolves around climate finance and risk.”

Project Outline: The paper endeavors to explore the notion of climate budgeting as a policy instrument for directing financial resources toward climate change mitigation and adaptation. Despite the recent upsurge in green and climate financing, its impact has reached a plateau, necessitating the identification, evaluation, and application of policy tools to standardize and channel such financing. Climate budgeting is one such tool that is progressively being adopted by governments worldwide to incorporate climate change considerations into budgeting and spending decisions. The primary aim of this paper is to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of green and climate budgeting, explore its techniques, obstacles, procedures, and instruments, identify effective practices, and formulate recommendations to promote the integration of climate budgeting into the mainstream. The study recognizes the potential of climate budgeting to channel financial resources toward climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, it acknowledges the challenges associated with it, including issues around data collection and monitoring, uncertainty, political hurdles, limited funding, lack of standardization, and complexity. The ultimate objective is to establish climate budgeting as a policy tool by means of recommendation to facilitate climate finance outflows to mitigate and adapt to the consequences of climate change in the state of Telangana as a case.