Objectives

• To align Odisha’s development trajectory with climate realities and Odisha@2036, adopting a place-based and people-centric approach.
• To shift climate action from fragmented responses to integrated, systems-based governance linking ecosystems, livelihoods, and institutions.
• To advance climate resilience and just transitions that protect vulnerable communities while enabling green livelihoods and equitable economies.
• To strengthen community stewardship, indigenous knowledge, and area-based planning in ecosystem restoration and adaptation efforts.

Participants

A total of around 787 participants including civil society, corporates, academia and researchers and PRI representatives, besides the invitees from the Government will participate in the event.

Collaboration

In addition to our partnership with United Nations Population Fund, we extended an invitation to the Government of Odisha to participate as a collaborator, strengthening the Conclave’s policy alignment and development perspective.

Highlights

Odisha at the Climate Frontline:

Odisha faces compounded climate risks—cyclones, droughts, floods, heat stress, and sea-level rise—disproportionately impacting small farmers, tribal communities, women, and coastal populations.

Need for a Landscape-Based Governance Shift:

Sectoral approaches are insufficient; forests, rivers, wetlands, coasts, and livelihoods must be governed as interconnected ecological systems at landscape and basin scales.

Key Strategic Questions

1)Governance & Rights

How can Odisha institutionalise community stewardship with secure tenure and real decision-making power across forests, wetlands, rivers, and marine systems?

2)Landscape & Basin Planning

What institutional mechanisms can enable integrated landscape- and basin-level planning that aligns ecology, livelihoods, and climate resilience?

3)Gender & Equity

How can women’s roles in NTFPs, fisheries, wetlands, and value chains be formally recognised, strengthened, and rewarded through policy and markets?

Highlights

Expanding Disaster Risk Profile:

Odisha’s disaster landscape is no longer limited to cyclones and floods; emerging hazards like heatwaves, lightning, landslides, and sea ingression are increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change.

Disproportionate Impact on the Vulnerable:

Marginalized communities—particularly rural poor, women, elderly, and informal workers—face higher exposure and lower adaptive capacity, making disaster preparedness a social justice issue.

Policy Recommendations

Evolving Risks

How are climate-induced hazards such as lightning, heatwaves, and landslides reshaping Odisha’s disaster risk profile, and which communities are most at risk?

Evolving Risks

How can Climate Smart Gram Panchayat principles be practically embedded within VDMPs and GP-DMPs to strengthen preparedness and adaptive capacity?

Early Warning & Communication

What mechanisms can improve coordination between CSOs, PRIs, and government agencies to ensure timely early warnings and effective last-mile communication?

Highlights

1. A Decade of Transition for India and Odisha

India’s net-zero pathway places livelihood security, economic resilience, and social inclusion at the centre of growth—especially in resource- and fossil fuel–dependent regions like Odisha.

2. Odisha at the Core of the Green Shift

With coal, minerals, forests, agriculture, and industry coexisting, Odisha’s transition will shape how growth shifts from extractive models to renewables, green manufacturing, and climate-resilient livelihoods.

Key Strategic Questions

1. Just Transition Pathways

How can Odisha design region-specific just transition strategies for coal, mining, and industrial clusters that protect livelihoods while enabling green economic diversification?

2. Inclusive Green Growth

What reforms are needed to build regenerative, fair, and circular market systems that reduce livelihood risk and strengthen producer collectives, women’s SHGs, and FPOs?

3. Role of Public Institutions and Funds

How can state policy, DMF, CSR, and rural development missions be better aligned to support locally anchored and inclusive green transitions?

Highlights

Data and Digital Infrastructure Are Inseparable for Climate Justice:

Climate justice depends not only on access to climate data but on robust, open, and interoperable Digital Public Goods (DPGs) that govern how data is produced, shared, and used.

Democratising Data Beyond Technology:

The session reframes data accessibility as a governance and equity challenge—recognising community knowledge, lived experience, and indigenous systems as legitimate data sources.

Policy Recommendations

1)Bridging the Governance Gap:

How can the OSDP and related state policies systematically capture, validate, and integrate lived experiences and indigenous knowledge of climate-vulnerable communities into official decision-making?

2)Digital Architecture for Resilience:

What architectural principles are required to build an interoperable digital ecosystem that connects diverse DPGs with state systems like EWDS, ensuring continuity during climate shocks?

Highlights

Clean Energy as a Livelihood Enabler:

Renewable energy is not just an infrastructure solution—it directly enhances productivity, reduces drudgery, lowers operating costs, and strengthens climate resilience for smallholder and informal livelihoods.

Odisha’s Livelihood–Energy Nexus:

Odisha’s dependence on agriculture, natural resources, and MSMEs makes decentralized clean energy critical for protecting livelihoods against climate shocks and energy insecurity..

From Isolated Solutions to Ecosystem Models:

Sustainable impact requires moving beyond stand-alone technologies toward integrated ecosystems that connect energy solutions with finance, skills, markets, and policy support.

Policy Recommendations

Ecosystem Design:

How can clean energy interventions be designed as livelihood ecosystems that integrate technology, finance, capacity building, and market access rather than remaining siloed solutions?

Scaling Pathways:

What enablers—policy, finance, institutional support, and capacity—are needed to scale clean energy–based livelihood models across diverse regions of Odisha?

Key Discussion Points

• What is the current status of universal healthcare for the elderly in Odisha? What steps need to be taken to widen the reach of health care to the different segments of elderly population in the state?

Highlights of the Discussion

• There is a need to prioritize and invest in adopting a healthy lifestyle as a prerequisite for promoting healthy aging.
• Awareness about pension and widow schemes remains notably low in Odisha, with only 12% of the population utilizing them. Increasing this awareness is of the essence.
• It is imperative to encourage the participation of women and elderly individuals in the workforce to foster economic empowerment.

Key Discussion Points

Climate Change as a Health Crisis
Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue—it is a growing public health emergency affecting disease patterns, nutrition, mental health, and mortality, especially in climate-sensitive regions.

Disproportionate Burden on the Vulnerable
Marginalized communities in the Global South—who contribute least to emissions—face the highest health risks due to heat stress, communicable diseases, NCDs, food insecurity, and disaster-related impacts.

Key Strategic Questions

Health Impacts and Equity
How is climate change reshaping health outcomes and social determinants of health, particularly for vulnerable and climate-dependent populations?

Disease and Climate Dynamics
What emerging trends are visible in communicable diseases, heat-related illnesses, and NCDs as climate variability and extremes intensify?

Systemic Resilience
How can healthcare systems be redesigned to remain functional, accessible, and responsive during climate shocks while addressing long-term climate risks?

Key Discussion Points

Climate Change Is Reshaping Mobility in Odisha
Floods, cyclones, heatwaves, soil salinity, coastal erosion, and livelihood decline are increasingly driving migration, relocation, and in situ adaptation across coastal, deltaic, western, and southern Odisha

Highlights of the Discussion

Mobility as Adaptation
How can migration, planned relocation, and in-place adaptation be recognised and governed as complementary climate adaptation strategies rather than signs of development failure?

From Distress to Dignity
What policies and institutional mechanisms are needed to shift migration from a distress-driven necessity to a safe, informed, and dignified choice?

Key Discussion Points

1. Adolescents as a Demographic and Climate Imperative
   Adolescents form over one-fifth of Odisha’s population, yet remain largely invisible in urban planning—despite being highly exposed to climate risks that affect their physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being.

2. Urbanisation Meets Climate Vulnerability
   As Odisha moves toward rapid urbanisation under Odisha Vision 2036–2047, cities must simultaneously address poverty, infrastructure growth, and escalating climate threats.

3. Public Spaces as Climate-Resilience Infrastructure
   Well-designed urban public spaces—green areas, commons, and inclusive civic spaces—play a critical role in reducing heat stress, managing floods, and supporting health equity and social cohesion.

Highlights of the Discussion

1. Perception and Safety
   How do adolescents perceive existing public spaces in terms of accessibility, safety, inclusion, and climate comfort?

2. Co-Creation and Governance
   How can adolescent-led co-creation of public spaces be institutionalised within local government and urban planning processes?

3. Mutual Benefits
   How do young people—and urban governance institutions—benefit from participatory public space planning and design?

Key Discussion Points

Data and Digital Infrastructure Are Co-Dependencies
Climate justice cannot be achieved through data access alone; it requires robust, open, and interoperable Digital Public Goods (DPGs) that govern how data is generated, shared, and used.

From Technical Systems to Justice-Oriented Governance
Digital transformation must move beyond efficiency and analytics to address power asymmetries—ensuring marginalized and climate-vulnerable communities are knowledge holders, not data subjects.

Institutionalising Community Knowledge
Platforms like Odisha State Data Platform must embed governance protocols that formally recognise community-derived and indigenous knowledge within official state decision-making.

Highlights of the Discussion

Bridging the Governance Gap
How can the OSDP and allied government policies systematically capture, validate, and integrate lived experiences and indigenous knowledge of climate-vulnerable communities into formal policymaking?

Architecture for Resilience
What digital architecture and interoperability principles are required to integrate diverse DPGs with state systems—ensuring data flows remain functional during climate extremes?

From Data to Decision-Making
How can institutionalised feedback loops be created between communities generating local data and policymakers to translate data into responsive planning and social accountability?

Key Discussion Points

Climate Change in Everyday Life
In Odisha, climate change is directly affecting food systems, water security, livelihoods, and the dignity of vulnerable communities—turning climate risk into a daily lived reality.

Young Grassroot Leaders as First Responders
Young Climate Champions are already mobilising communities, safeguarding local ecological knowledge, and innovating low-cost, practical climate solutions rooted in lived experience.

Leadership Without Recognition
Despite their frontline role, grassroots youth leadership remains largely invisible in formal planning, governance, and decision-making processes.

Highlights of the Discussion

Lived Impacts
How are climate change impacts reshaping food systems, water security, livelihoods, and dignified living in young leaders’ communities?

Root Causes
What ecological, social, and governance factors lie behind these disruptions?

Existing Community Solutions
What climate solutions already exist within communities, and how effective are they in building resilience?

Institutional Support Systems
How can Panchayats, community institutions, CSOs, and government agencies better support and scale youth-led climate action?

Youth Agency and Action
As grassroots leaders, what concrete actions can young Climate Champions take to strengthen local resilience and collective adaptation?

Key Discussion Points

PRIs at the Climate Frontline
Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in Odisha are on the frontlines of climate vulnerability and ecological degradation—managing forests, commons, coasts, and livelihoods where climate impacts are most visible.

From Local Governance to Climate Leadership
Elected PRI representatives are increasingly expected to lead climate-smart planning, ecological restoration, biodiversity protection, and inclusive development at the grassroots.

Untapped Potential, Unclear Pathways
While PRIs hold constitutional authority and proximity to communities, the pathways for effective PRI-led climate action—and the support systems required—remain under-defined.

Highlights of the Discussion

Scope of PRI Action
What concrete roles can Panchayats play in climate resilience—across commons management, climate-smart planning, livelihood diversification, and vulnerability reduction?

Governance and Authority
How can PRIs better exercise their constitutional mandate to lead ecological restoration and climate action at the local level?

Support Systems
What forms of policy support, technical assistance, financing, and convergence are required from government departments, CSOs, and institutions to enable PRI leadership?

Key Discussion Points

A Moment for Collective Action in Odisha
Escalating climate variability, disasters, livelihood stress, and ecological degradation in Odisha demand stronger coordination between civil society and CSR actors working on climate resilience.

Parallel Efforts, Limited Scale
While CSOs bring deep community trust and contextual knowledge, and CSR brings finance, technology, and innovation, the lack of structured collaboration limits convergence and long-term impact.

Need for a Shared Climate Collaboration Platform
A structured dialogue space is essential to align efforts, share learning, and co-create coordinated responses for climate resilience and just transition across sectors and geographies.

Highlights of the Discussion

Shared Vision and Role
What should be the collective vision, core values, and unique role of the CSO–CSR collaborative within Odisha’s climate and development ecosystem?

Governance and Coordination
What light-touch governance mechanisms, collaboration norms, communication protocols, and secretariat functions are needed to sustain effective collaboration?

Leveraging Complementarities
How can CSO field experience and CSR resources (finance, technology, innovation) be strategically combined for greater scale and impact?

Key Discussion Points

Odisha at the Climate–Development Crossroads
Recurrent cyclones, heatwaves, floods, and coastal erosion are intersecting with livelihood dependence on agriculture, fisheries, and forestry—placing women, tribal communities, and informal workers at heightened risk.

CSR as a Catalyst for Climate-Resilient Growth
Corporate Social Responsibility can accelerate Odisha’s transition by combining capital, technology, and innovation with community-led resilience and low-carbon development pathways.

Strong Community Ecosystems, Untapped Synergies
SHGs, FPOs, youth groups, MSMEs, and local institutions provide a strong foundation for scaling climate-smart livelihoods, renewable energy, disaster preparedness, and green entrepreneurship.

Highlights of the Discussion

Strategic Alignment
How can CSR investments be better aligned with Odisha’s climate risks, demographic dividend, and long-term development vision to maximise impact?

From Pilots to Scale
What mechanisms are needed to identify, document, and scale successful CSR innovations in climate resilience, green skilling, and sustainable livelihoods?

Community–Corporate Convergence
How can corporate expertise, finance, and market access be effectively integrated with community institutions such as SHGs, FPOs, youth collectives, and local governments?

Key Discussion Points

Odisha at a Green Transition Moment
Climate variability, ecological stress, and livelihood shifts are reshaping Odisha’s development pathway, creating urgency—and opportunity—for green, regenerative economic models.

Community-Anchored Innovations Lead the Way
CSOs, local institutions, entrepreneurs, and knowledge partners are already demonstrating field-tested solutions in climate-resilient agriculture, ecosystem restoration, circular economy, and low-carbon livelihoods.

From Pilots to Systems Change
The Mission Green Economy track focuses on solutions that are not only innovative but scalable, replicable, and adaptable across Odisha’s diverse socio-ecological contexts.

Highlights of the Discussion

Scalability and Replication
What makes community-led green economy solutions scalable and adaptable across districts with different ecological and livelihood contexts?

From Innovation to Adoption
How can promising solutions move from demonstration to widespread adoption through civil society networks and local institutions?

Community and Knowledge Integration
How can traditional knowledge, local governance systems, and community practices be embedded into green economy innovations?