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Environment | Time Bomb Ticking
Time Bomb Ticking

Time Bomb Ticking

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The key findings of the policy brief titled The costs of climate change in India: A review of the climate-related risks facing India, and their economic and social costs (released in June 2021) prepared by Angela Picciariello, Sarah Colenbrander, Amir Bazaz and Rathin Roy, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), are as follows (please click here to access): 

• India is already feeling the impacts of climate change. Heatwaves are becoming more common and severe, with many cities reporting temperatures above 48°C in 2020. Heavy rain events have increased threefold since 1950, but total precipitation is declining: a billion people in India currently face severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year. Rising sea levels are also creating risks as a third of India’s population live along the coast, where the north Indian Ocean has risen by an average of 3.2 mm per year over the last two decades.

• The economic costs of climate impacts in India are already immense. In 2020, a single event – Cyclone Amphan – affected 13 million people and caused over $13 billion in damage after it made landfall. Declining agricultural productivity, rising sea levels and negative health outcomes were forecast to cost India 3 percent of gross domestic product at 1°C of global warming.

• Low-income and other marginalised groups are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Sustained high temperatures take a disproportionate toll on those who depend on manual outdoor work or live in crowded, poorly ventilated homes. Floods, storm surge and cyclones wreak the most havoc on densely settled, low-income communities not served by risk-reducing infrastructure. One study suggests that declining agricultural productivity and rising cereal prices could increase India’s national poverty rate by 3.5 percent by 2040 compared to a zero-warming scenario; this equates to around 50 million more poor people that year.

• Lower-carbon development could yield immediate benefits such as cleaner air, greater energy security and rapid job creation. India’s climate targets are considered to be ‘2°C compatible’, i.e. a fair share of global effort. However, pursuing a cleaner, more resource-efficient path could stimulate a faster, fairer economic recovery and secure India’s prosperity and competitiveness in the long term.

• India does not bear responsibility for rising temperatures. Despite being home to 17.8 percent of the world’s population, India accounts for only 3.2 percent of cumulative emissions (Global Change Data Lab, 2021). Yet India cannot achieve its development aspirations without taking climate change into account (Dubash, 2019).

• Rising average temperatures are leading to more frequent and severe heatwaves across the country. Between 1985 and 2009, western and southern India experienced 50 percent more heatwave events than in the previous 25 years. Heatwaves in 2013 and 2015 killed more than 1,500 and 2,000 people across the country (Mazdiyasni et al., 2017).

• As rainfall has declined, the proportion of precipitation that is infiltrating the soil and recharging aquifers has also fallen because more land is covered by hard surfaces – asphalt, cement and the like. In parallel, Indian agriculture is increasingly dependent on groundwater even as the physical supply is depleted (Zaveri et al., 2016). As a result of the interplay between climatic and development factors, a billion people in India face severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year; 180 million face severe water scarcity all year round (Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2016). These shortages take place in a context where many people lack adequate water for drinking, sanitation or hygiene.

• Global warming has consequently accelerated and average temperatures around the world were 1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2017 (Connors et al., 2019). With rapid, ambitious and well-targeted mitigation action, it may be possible to hold the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C at the end of the century (IPCC, 2018). However, current policies will result in warming of at least 3°C above pre-industrial levels (UN Environment, 2020) – and a much more severe climate crisis, the costs of which will be borne most heavily by low-income and other marginalised groups.

• At the lower end of the spectrum, Kahn et al. (2019) predict that climate change could reduce India’s GDP by around 2.6 percent by 2100 even if the global temperature increase is held below 2°C; however, this rises by up to 13.4 percent in a 4°C scenario. These results are narrowly based on projections of temperature and precipitation changes, and the effect on labour productivity in different sectors. Climate change may also affect labour productivity through additional channels, for instance by increased incidence of endemic vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya, filariasis, Japanese encephalitis and visceral leishmaniasis (Dhiman et al., 2010).



Rural Expert
 

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