Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday launched the ‘Leaders in Climate Change Management’ (LCCM) programme aimed at building capacity among urban professionals to lead climate action across sectors and geographies in the country.

In a statement, the Ministry said to facilitate the face-to-face learning programme, the Administrative Training Institute (ATI), Mysuru has also signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) and the WRI India, becoming the first delivery partner of the LCCM programme.

LCCM envisions capacitating 5,000 professionals, including mid to junior-level government officials and frontline workers, and preparing them to champion climate change adaptation and mitigation solutions towards a coordinated effort to achieve India's climate commitments, according to the statement.

At the event, Puri said the Narendra Modi government has taken many concrete steps in pushing the sustainability agenda forward. At COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Modi announced India's aggressive agenda on climate change through the Panch Amrit action plan, which envisages India becoming a net-zero emission country by 2070, the minister pointed out.

"The LCCM programme seeks to not only identify hundreds of climate leaders but also focus on how these leaders can be oriented in terms of their training and how they will move forward. The very fact that we are thinking about this is a revolutionary step," Puri said.

Presenting the LCCM programme, its structure and aim to upskill urban climate leadership in the country, WRI India CEO OP Agarwal said the key challenge in building capacity for mid-career professionals is using the right kind of pedagogy -- a teaching style that encourages learning by doing, rather than by just listening to lectures.

Agarwal also said LCCM has fully recognised this and adopted this kind of teaching style. The online learning will be hosted on the National Urban Learning Platform (NULP), the capacity building arm of the NIUA. It will also be hosted and supported by ATI, Mysuru. The programme aims to sign similar MoUs with ATIs across the country over the next few months, the ministry said.