The TREADS Initiative with the support of National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) invites you to the tenth talk in its Water-centric Master Planning in India series on:
Mainstreaming Climate Action into Statutory Master Planning
Thursday, 14th August 2025, 3:30 PM IST
Speaker:
Benjamin John, Head of Implementation, South and West Asia, C40 Cities
This event will be held online via Zoom. Please register to attend.
About the talk:
Indian cities are at the forefront of the climate crisis, be it air pollution in Delhi, rising sea levels in Mumbai, heat in Chennai, or flooding in Bengaluru. In contrast, development in Indian cities has been majorly driven by statutory Master Plans without adequate attention to climate considerations. Climate mainstreaming offers cities the opportunity to systematically integrate environmental commitments and considerations into city processes to institutionalise climate action across all areas of the city’s work (land use plans, building bye-laws, budgets, etc.). The talk aims to unpack current challenges with statutory master-planning in India and explore the opportunities for mainstreaming climate action into statutory land-use planning.
About the speaker:
Benjamin serves as the Head of Implementation for South and West Asia at C40 Cities. His work with Chennai and Bengaluru includes helping both cities prepare their climate action plans and further supporting the implementation of high impact actions across various sectors such as Energy, Transport, Land Use Planning etc.
He is currently supporting Chennai in the preparation of its next Master Plan. Before joining C40, Benjamin worked with the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) in Delhi, where he contributed to the preparation of the Draft Master Plan for Delhi 2041. With the Dutch consultancy firm Royal Haskoning DHV (RHDHV), Benjamin worked on the draft Revised Master Plan of Bengaluru 2031 as well as on the greenfield urban extension master plans for Surat and Aurangabad.
By training, Benjamin is an architect with a double Master’s in urban regional planning and urban design from CEPT, Ahmedabad. Over the last 12 years, his work has focused on strategic planning with outcomes focused on mitigating climate change and improving quality of life.
