Policy and Governance Advisory

Why Subnational Action Matters

India's diversity makes subnational action indispensable to achieving sustainable development and policy outcomes. This diversity means that effective solutions must be tailored to local contexts alongside national-level approaches. States serve as laboratories for innovation, generating lessons and best practices that can be adapted and scaled across the country. We believe that national commitments and development goals can only be realised through strong state-level action. Our work focuses on translating national priorities into actionable, evidence-based strategies for states, supporting locally driven solutions that deliver measurable impact while contributing to India's broader economic, social, and environmental objectives.

Our Subnational Engagement

Our subnational strategy aims to work across 16 Indian states by 2028, building long-term partnerships with state governments to support evidence-based policymaking. Through data-driven research and stakeholder engagement, we seek to identify the most pressing challenges faced by states, assess the barriers limiting effective climate action, and uncover opportunities for targeted interventions. By generating robust evidence and actionable insights, our objective is to help states strengthen their policy frameworks, identify existing gaps, and accelerate progress toward their climate, development, and sustainability goals.

Successful Policy Inputs

Our sustained engagement with state and national governments has enabled us to shape key policy frameworks across India, including Punjab's State Action Plan on Climate Change and Vision 2047, Haryana's State Environment Plan, Uttar Pradesh's Clean Air Action Plan, Madhya Pradesh's State Action Plan on Climate Change 2.0, and Himachal Pradesh's upcoming Heat Wave Action Plan. At the national level, our work has informed the Bureau of Energy Efficiency's carbon market methodology, and we were invited to provide expert testimony before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs on "India's Role and Presence in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions," making Gateway Research Institute one of the youngest policy research organisations to depose before a Parliamentary Standing Committee.

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Technical Capabilities

High-Resolution Source Apportionment
12x12km district-level modeling to identify precise emission hotspots and sector-specific contributors across the state. This granular data allows for the development of targeted, localized mitigation strategies that address the unique atmospheric profiles of individual districts rather than relying on broad state averages.
Socio-Economic Policy Forecasting
Advanced scenario analysis to model the impact of clean energy transitions, such as accelerated EV adoption and Green Hydrogen integration. These forecasts integrate state-specific socio-economic variables, including population growth and industrial development, to calculate the sensitivity of emission reductions to specific subnational policy interventions.
Machine Learnt Spatiotemporal Mapping
Integration of Sentinel-1 (SAR) and Sentinel-2 (Multispectral) data streams into automated Machine Learning (ML) pipelines to classify paddy field extent and flooding dynamics. This geospatial framework provides the high-resolution layer necessary to scale methane emission factors and validate the efficacy of subnational mitigation strategies, such as Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD).