In 2021 India witnessed multiple intense cascading risk scenarios. The year has unfolded to expose the challenges of a riskier world. However, it is also an opportunity to chart out India’s adaptation and resilience pathways – as well as their economic implications.
By Santosh Kumar, Sapna Dubey & Sanjay Srivastava
In 2021 India witnessed multiple intense cascading risk scenarios. Amid the second wave of COVID-19, triggered by the Delta variant, five cyclonic storms hit the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea – Cyclone Tauktae, Yaas, Gulaab, Shaheen and Jawad. Erratic monsoons left a trail of devastating major floods across Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.
The year has unfolded to expose the challenges of a riskier world. However, it is also an opportunity to chart out India’s adaptation and resilience pathways – as well as their economic implications.
Tracking poverty, SDG progress and climate vulnerability
Poverty, according to India’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) baseline report, is the deprivation of crucial and basic parameters of health, education and living standards. Published in November 2021, the report lists Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh as the states with the highest population of multi-dimensional poor.
NITI Aayog (the National Institution for Transforming India) released its third edition of the SDG India Index and Dashboard 2020–21: Partnerships in the Decade of Action in June, tracking progress across 115 indicators for 16 out of the 17 sustainable development goals. Lowest ranking states were Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
In April the Department of Science and Technology released a detailed assessment report of climate vulnerability across India. The most vulnerable states and districts, assessed according to their current climate risk and key drivers of vulnerability, are Jharkhand, Mizoram, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, and West Bengal. The study also captures district-level vulnerabilities, identifying over 60% of the districts in Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand as highly vulnerable.
Looking at these reports together, it is clear that states with higher climate vulnerabilities are also multi-dimensionally poor and feature at the bottom of SDG matrix pyramid. Managing these interlinked risks is key to building a resilient future.
The costs of India’s climate risk and adaptation
The UNESCAP Risk and Resilience Portal estimates India’s annualized average loss (AAL) from slow-onset hazards, extreme events and biological hazards at $93 billion – or 3.35 per cent of GDP.
Drought contributes more than 70 per cent to India’s riskscape followed by floods, cyclone and earthquake/tsunami. The AAL increases to $132 billion (4.75 per cent of India GDP) and $224 billion (8.84 per cent of India GDP) under the moderate and worst climate change scenarios (representative concentration pathways 4.5 and 8.5).
The portal also estimates total climate adaptation costs for cascading hazards in India (natural and biological) under an extreme climate change scenario at US$ 43.3 billion (1.6 per cent of India’s GDP). This means that an investment of US$1 in adaptation contributes to a reduction in AAL by US$5.5.
Adaptation priorities and key policy actions
To address its unique riskscape, India should prioritize making new infrastructure resilient, strengthening early-warning systems, making water resource management resilient and improving dryland agriculture crop production, followed by protecting mangroves in the East and West coasts of India. More granular risk analysis and profiles can help target appropriate adaption action locally.
Two successful ongoing national programmes are especially significant:
One, the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), with an annual budget of $13 billion (2020), addresses all the adaptation priorities substantially. Two-thirds of its budget goes into natural resources management, water management, drought-proofing, and building grey and green infrastructure (including nature-based solutions). It helps build community resilience through natural resource management, inclusion, and livelihood security for poor and marginalized people. India’s efforts in strengthening multi-hazard early-warning systems continue to address unmet needs of the most vulnerable in climate risk hotspots.