Can India afford to wait as climate costs mounting

Various reports on climate change point out the heavy adverse impact on human and animal life, natural disaster, loss of physical infrastructure and lot of pain suffered by humans, consequences of health issues, heavy burden on the concerned States in providing relief and cost of rebuilding and recovery and it’s impact on state’s budget as heavy extra expenditure towards these additional expenditure as most of the States have not provided for such unpredictable adverse events which has to provided for by additional borrowings which affects their fiscal position and time and efforts taken further to recovery efforts ,recovery from extreme climate incidents and restarting towards economic activities including agriculture will take time by which some vulnerable states are getting fresh climate change incidents with apart from human sufferings and pain, will lead to inability of the Government to provide relief and on debt and on economic and financial front the States suffer and becomes weak in meeting such contingencies.

It is therefore imperative that the physical risk and transition risk are to be factored in States and central policies and all Regulators and stakeholders have to work towards adaptation and mitigation measures by effective and genuine efforts as well every citizen have to be socially responsible and their commitment towards adopting and mitigation should be total and without further affecting our environment including forests, nature, conservation of water, saving the earth, avoiding earth degradation and restoring the natural balance in Environment and economic growth with social responsibility and all physical infrastructure cannot be at the loss to the eco balance and all permission from pollution front and approval at all levels should keep in mind that any relaxation and deviation from the laid down rules in putting such projects will result in future complications and heavy loss in future climate related incidents which are unpredictable and we are creating a heavy burden and suffering to our future generations and putting them in a greater climate related risk.

Everybody knows that our tradition tells that earth is our mother and every action of ours to protect our earth and our day to life and respecting the value of nature, earth should be imbibed in our lifestyle and we not only to be self aware of this aspect of loving and respecting Earth, nature, we need to spread this important message and the society should adopt their mission to be socially responsible and extend help and contribute to the states and central policies and projects towards adoption and mitigation.

We must fully appreciate and adopt the India’s ‘LIFE’ mission in true spirit. “Lifestyle for Environment” of India has been launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become a global movement to encourage individuals to adopt environmentally friendly lifestyle by shifting from mindless consumption to mindful resource utilisation. Everyone should be mindful and should be aware of these adverse climate events happening and makes it a imperative necessity of adopting and promoting simple, everyday actions that should be ‘Pro-Planet People’ and we should be the ambassadors of fostering sustainable norms for protecting the environment.

Pro- Planet People (P3) Life aims to build a global community of individuals who are committed to living environmentally conscious lives and they are the propagaters of ‘LIFE’ Day today life adopting Sustainable Practices and promoting these policies within their network. We need to have a globally conscious environmentally friendly group and leaders who in all their actions and decisions taken with nature in mind and these sustainability issues and these positive behaviours becomes a global movement and result in positive action both in present and future generations will also follow these steps which will try to mitigate these climate related risks.

India has been experiencing various climate incidents like heat waves, severe floods, droughts and changing monsoon patterns like deficit rainfall, excessive rain, regional Imbalances in rain pattern, cloud bursts, etc., which are largely due to excessive Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels use, excessive cutting trees resulting deforestation and degradation of land, etc., in this regard, in spite of India taking substantial lead in adoption and capacity creation and usage of alternative energy like renewables, solar, wind, hydropower, etc., paralelly due to faster economic growth and activities, usage of fossil fuels have not come down, leading to mining of coal, other mining of various metal products.

As we are yet to achieve peak in terms of the usage after which there will be substantial lesser use of these fossil fuels as by which our alternative energy usage would have also maximised.

In our quest for human occupation at hilly terrain, excessive construction of human settlements and possible expansion of these hilly regions for economic activities and urbanization has led to decrease in forest cover and unauthorised construction, which has resulted in higher heat, excessive periods of heat waves for most of the hilly and cool places.

This heat waves result in ice glacier getting melted and such places getting excessive rain and cloud burst, which will lead to rivers flowing excessively which affects rivers flowing routes and destructing massive human living areas.

For example, in the Himalayan state, it has seen 45 cloudbursts, 91 flash floods and 105 major landslides so far in this season. You can imagine what would be the adverse impacts on agriculture, fruits and vegetables, transport system, arranging relief camps, providing financial relief, rebuilding and restarting the livelihood and economic recovery.etc along with health care. The pressure both financially and physically on States and relevant disaster recovery and physical safety measures are large.

Due to excessive heatwaves extreme weather events are happening on most of the times in a year. According to the Centre for Science and Environment, in the last three years such extreme weather events happened for 314 days in 2022, 318 days in 2023; and 322 days in 2024, out of 365;days ina year. Moreover, the Himalayan region has seen a 2.5°C rise over pre- industrial levels. India’s annual temperature has risen by 0.69°C over pre industrial level since 2021. It is reported that the country’s warmest years in 120 years have all been in the past 15 years. This will give us the likely pattern of such climate change incidents to happen and we must keep these factors in our future steps.

According to CSE-DTE data centre, heavy rains, floods and landslides happened 208 in 2023 and 227 in 2024 and heat waves 77 in 2024 against 49 in 2023. The impact according to RBI, extreme heat and humidity could cost India upto 4.5 per cent of its GDP by 2030 due to loss labour hours. The human lives lost, houses damaged, crop area affected and displacement and migration all are rising.

Massive urbanisation and excessive heat of cement, steel and construction as well high pollution and massive pressure on urban infrastructure and all the green areas and forex cover are excessively damaged and reduced without further new trees planted much, heavy road transport which will add greenhouse gas emissions, etc., are also affecting the environment and that had led to extreme weather events.

Can we further enhance the climate change events or we need to urgently adoption and take mitigation measures and as desired, our mindset and behaviours to change as set out in the LIFE style Mission and all of us as stakeholders to rise upto the need for environmental friendly and socially responsible citizens to protect and provide a better and safe living conditions to our future generations. Let all of us join the government and all other agencies in pursuit of making this Mission successful.

(The author is a former CMD at Indian Overseas Bank)