Climate action often begins with urgency. Plans are announced, budgets committed, and pilots launched. But somewhere between the drawing board and the footpath, momentum wanes. Policies don’t fail for lack of intent, they stall when intent isn’t carried through.
In governance, this drop-off isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just the difference between someone who stays with an idea and someone who moves on before it matures.
Earlier this year, we worked on a campaign to recognise hyperlocal climate champions across Bengaluru. The idea was simple: recognise those doing quiet work at the ground level to keep their neighbourhoods greener and cleaner- citizens, informal groups, frontline workers, volunteers. To improve visibility, we sought support from senior officials and political leadership, hoping to spark citywide energy. But as the campaign grew, momentum drifted, so did its centre of gravity. The spotlight shifted to institutional nominations. The original focus on hyperlocal changemakers began to fade.
This wasn’t a failure. It was a familiar trade-off: higher reach, but weaker localisation. In grabbing widespread outreach and scale, the effort lost some of its initial nuance, in recognising everyday hyperlocal actors quietly shaping the city’s climate. The campaign still moved forward, just in a different shape.
Leadership matters, at every level. Senior champions help push climate ideas onto larger stages. But mid-tier and local-level actors, engineers, officers, and coordinators shape what survives that spotlight. They are often the ones translating ambition into architecture, vision into valves and pipes.
Studies show that subnational climate governance improves measurably when departmental leadership remains stable over a three-year cycle, especially in urban missions (TERI, 2019). In cities like Pune and Bhubaneswar, continuity among key climate officers directly correlated with smoother plan execution and fewer delays.
So, how do we protect the core intent of a plan, even as leadership shifts or scale increases? One way is through design safeguards; like framing clear purpose statements, co-developing criteria with community, and locking in local goals early on. These designs help anchor and root projects’ intent and priorities regardless of leadership changes and who carries them forward.
Because when a new team arrives, they shouldn’t have to guess what the point was.
Climate action doesn’t suffer from too many ideas. It struggles when ideas lack stewards, people who don’t just launch a programme, but stay long enough to notice if it’s drifting. Without that, even a well-drafted strategy can lose shape between the files and the field.
So the real question isn’t just who decides, but who stays.
Getting this right is less about fixing a flaw and more about understanding the nuance of how governance flows. It’s about recognising that execution strength isn’t only a function of resources, but of relationships, across time, departments, and people. The right champions, at the right levels, can turn fleeting intent into lasting impact.
And when climate work becomes embedded, not optional, the system doesn’t just start a project, it sees it through. Because the actual wins aren’t the launch of campaigns or its ubiquity; it’s in making sure the heart and core nuance doesn’t get diluted on the way up.
