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Experts have warned that people living in parts of India experiencing extreme weather events are “losing their ability to cope” and are being forced to flee their homes.
Weather-related disasters such as extreme heat, drought and severe floods are increasing in frequency and intensity in India. While the suffering they cause is great and widespread, vulnerable and poor communities are usually the worst hit.
A study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based public interest research and advocacy organisation, tracked extreme weather events in India last year and found that overall, the country witnessed such events on 314 out of 365 days.
CSE said 2,923 people were killed, nearly two million hectares of crops were damaged, 80,000 houses were destroyed and more than 92,000 animals perished. But the organisation said the numbers could be even higher because the data is not complete.
CSE chief Sunita Narain told DW that the environmental crisis is also leading to displacement and people are being forced to migrate to already crowded metropolises.
He said human-induced climate change was making farmers and others in the agricultural sector poorer.
“With the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, people are losing their ability to cope and have no choice but to migrate. The challenge is for all countries, especially rich ones, to take climate change goals seriously,” Narayan stressed.
Also read: India’s urban heat islands
Migration challenge is getting worse
India has the highest number of population displacements in the world every year. Most of this is due to disasters.
The “State of India’s Environment-2022” report ranks India fourth in the world in terms of migration caused by climate change. The study found that more than three million people were forced to leave their homes in 2020-2021 due to environmental disasters.
In India, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimates that there are currently around 14 million people in total who have been forced from their homes due to climate change.
Although the state is prepared to provide immediate assistance for disaster relief and rehabilitation, there is little long-term institutional support that addresses the needs of people affected by these disasters.
A report published by ActionAid and Climate Action Network South Asia estimates that in India alone, climate emergencies will force 45 million people to flee their homes by 2050 – three times the current number of people migrating as a result of extreme weather events.
The summer of 2024 has already begun to wreak havoc on parts of India, where heavy rainfall and devastating floods may occur.
The heavy rains were followed by an unbearable heat wave, with temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in places such as New Delhi and the northern states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
Although the main summer months in India – April to June – are always hot, temperatures have increased even more in the last decade. The intensity of rainfall and floods has also increased.
Meanwhile, about 80% of India’s population lives in areas considered vulnerable to disasters such as heatwaves or severe flooding.
Extreme weather and carbon emissions
Scientists say that as the planet warms and greenhouse gas emissions rise, extreme weather and related disasters will only get worse.
He has called for drastic measures to reduce emissions to control rapidly rising global temperatures.
India is currently the third-largest emitter of gases that warm the planet. But its per capita carbon footprint is much lower than that of Western industrialised nations.
According to the World Bank, India emits an average of about two tonnes of CO2 per capita per year, compared with about seven tonnes per capita in the European Union and 15 tonnes per capita in the United States.
And as part of India’s climate change efforts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has vowed to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2070.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said India needs to develop a long-term plan to tackle the problem of climate-induced migration.
“There is rapid migration from intensive agricultural areas in India, which are affected by reduced rainfall and drought,” he said.
“The affected people are moving to densely populated metropolitan cities like Mumbai, where they are exposed to a variety of increasing climate risks, including heavy rainfall, cyclones and rising sea levels,” he said.
“These migrants often live in low-lying areas that are prone to flooding, and lack adequate housing and resilience, leaving them vulnerable to heavy rainfall, cyclones and heat waves.”
Call to make agriculture and rural areas ‘climate-proof’
Avinash Mohanty, sector head of climate change and sustainability at international development organisation IPE Global, said these events would lead to large-scale unemployment.
He told DW that heat stress alone “will lead to the loss of more than 34 million jobs in India, leading to a drop in GDP of about 4.5% by 2030. These numbers speak volumes.”
Mohanty believes India needs to measure the impacts of climate change in a sector-wise manner, particularly on the issue of climate-induced migration. Other experts have also called for making agriculture and other rural economic activities “climate-proof” to limit environmental displacement and migration.
“Many migrants are migrating not only because of climate change, but also because of difficult economic conditions that are exacerbated by climate change,” CSE’s Narayan said.
He said policies aimed at providing support to vulnerable climate migrants are currently “severely lacking”.
Narayan also stressed the need to invest in building local climate resilience and protecting economies.
Mohanty also agrees with this view.
“Although India has a strong climate action plan at the national and sub-national levels, it does not include climate-induced migration as a core issue,” he said.
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