For the past year, with the drawdown of US climate commitments under President Donald Trump and the slowing of Europe’s green ambitions following the energy crisis triggered by the Ukraine war, there has been much talk of a shift in climate action from the Global North to the Global South – or, at the very least, of an increasing focus on regional or subnational coalitions.

That talk has also been driven by China consolidating its position as the world’s largest investor in renewables as well as the largest producer and market for electric vehicles, in addition to the expansion of solar power in countries like Brazil and India. The shift was signposted in a smaller way in February by Mumbai Climate Week, the inaugural edition of a global forum that was touted as “India’s first dedicated platform to accelerate climate action for the Global South”.

The original “Climate Week” was started in New York in 2009 by international non-profit Climate Group as a forum to discuss climate action outside official negotiations, and has since scaled up to become an important networking event for advocacy groups, community leaders, start-ups, and policy experts – as well as for corporates, whose presence at the event has increased over the years (one expert told The New York Times that it had transformed from “Burning Man for climate geeks” to the “Davos of climate”).

Because it coincides with the annual UN General Assembly, New York Climate Week has a global reach, giving world leaders and business a platform for big-ticket announcements. Similar events in other countries – including those organized by the UN – tend to be more local or regional.

India’s inaugural version, led by local NGO Project Mumbai in partnership with the government of Maharashtra, certainly had ambition. The event convened participants from over 30 countries, featuring more than 400 speakers and 4,000 attendees from business, local government, NGOs, and research, and included discussions on everything from waste systems to sustainable cooling solutions.

The state government signed a clutch of partnerships with international bodies including C40, UNEP, and WRI, spanning urban planning, climate finance, and nature-based resilience.

US-based delegates at the conference, especially of Indian origin, were taken with the potential for projects in the region, and with the palpable energy that had been missing from New York’s event the previous September, where dismay with Trump’s budgets cuts and policy reversals had dominated conversations. But India’s first Climate Week also reflected the challenges of climate action, from finance to equity, especially when that action flows from global to national or local systems in the south.

Southern limits

The foremost problem is financing the shift away from fossil fuel-based economies and of protecting communities most at risk from the impacts of global warming. Current climate finance commitments of at least US$300 billion per year by 2035 remain far below the US$2.4 trillion that will be annually needed by developing countries, excluding China.

India alone is estimated to need nearly $467 billion in additional capital expenditure through 2030 to transform the four key sectors of steel, cement, power, and road transport, according to an assessment by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress. This funding gap has been the central tension in climate negotiations between developing countries and developed countries in recent years.

Most global finance also currently goes to mitigation – the reduction of warming emissions – rather than adaptation, or the preparation and defense of communities from climate impacts such as heatwaves and floods. Developing countries, which have contributed the least to warming emissions historically, are on the frontline of such impacts.

Domestic finance is the prime driver of climate action in India, but New Delhi has been moving to create a national climate finance taxonomy to facilitate more external and private investments. Unlocking global capital markets was a key focus at Mumbai Climate Week, where the Maharashtra government launched several programs to facilitate investments into the state, explicitly selling Mumbai to the array of international banks in attendance as a gateway for global finance. “If climate capital must flow at scale,” said state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, “Mumbai is ready to become a medium for that flow.”

Many of the global partnerships signed were focused on urban climate, reflecting the growing recognition that cities are on the frontline of heat and other climate impacts, and that municipal governments can make for effective local partners.

Parallel paths

A question remains – who receives this finance? Critics say funds tend to go to larger players and big projects rather than local grassroots groups who are unable to, or don’t know how to access them. Another issue is that such finance, while necessary, runs the risk of creating a parallel industry of solutions rather than transforming existing development pathways.

That gap was evident in Mumbai, where the same week the state government signed climate partnerships, its forest department moved to clear thousands of mangroves for a coastal road. The project wasn’t isolated; a spurt of infrastructure and construction projects has dented green cover and increased air pollution in Indian cities over the past few years.

Regulations mandate pollution control and compensatory greening for such projects, but the former isn’t well enforced and the latter is often dispersed to distant locations, which is of no use to the communities affected by the loss of trees.

The irony was not lost on Mumbai residents who turned up to protest at the Climate Week venue – they got to hear politicians who have ignored community opposition and encouraged private car use trot out the jargon of climate resilience, from “walkable cities” to “inclusivity.” The forum venue exemplified the gap, located in a new “planned” business district that lacks adequate public transport and green cover.

For all these contradictions, India’s inaugural climate week seemed to reflect a genuine moment of transition – a shift toward regional and local mobilisation at a time of faltering global action. Economics is a driver; solar energy is now cheaper than coal in many markets, and the ability to generate it locally rather than depend on central grids or imported fuels is an advantage.

The recent West Asia crisis could sharpen that calculus. The conflict disrupted India’s cooking gas supply and raised diesel and petrol prices. The crisis coincided with one of the region’s hottest summers, the high temperatures leading to strained power grids and outages even in Mumbai, whose electricity supply has historically been among the country’s most stable.

In May, more than two months after the climate forum, and following an austerity call by the Prime Minister, the Maharashtra government directed officials to carpool their commutes. And in June, the business district started Public Transport Fridays to encourage employees to leave their cars behind. Whether authorities can make that work may be the first real sign of change.

Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar is an award-winning science and environment journalist. She was a CASI Fall 2025 Visiting Fellow.

This article was first published on India in Transition, a publication of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

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