Climate change may prevent India from meeting its long-term sustainable development goals

The frequency, severity, and fatality of heatwaves in India are rising, placing a strain on the nation's agricultural sector, public health, and other socioeconomic and cultural institutions. Heatwaves made more likely by climate change may impair India's progress towards its sustainable development goals, according to a study by Ramit Debnath of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues that was published in PLOS Climate.

India's Goal To be Compromised

India has pledged to meet seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including zero poverty, good health and well-being, decent work, and economic growth. The impact of heatwaves connected to climate change on SDG development, however, may not be adequately captured by current climate vulnerability assessments.

Researchers conducted an analytical evaluation of India's heat index (HI) with its climate vulnerability index (CVI), a composite index using various indicators to account for socioeconomic, livelihood, and biophysical factors, in order to analyse India's climate vulnerability and how climate change may impact SDG progress.

To categorise severity levels, they used a publicly accessible dataset on state-level climate vulnerability indicators from the National Data & Analytics Platform of the Indian Government. The researchers then contrasted extreme weather-related mortality from 2001-2021 with India's progress towards the SDGs over a 20-year period (2001-2021).

The researchers discovered that heat waves have hindered SDG development more than was initially thought, and that the measures used for present assessments may be insufficient to fully account for India's specific vulnerabilities to the effects of climate change.

Statistics regarding the effects of India's heatwave

More than 90% of the country is at extremely cautious or dangerous levels of severely affecting adaptive livelihood capacity, food grain yield, vector-borne disease transmission, and urban sustainability, according to an analytical evaluation of the heat index (HI) with CVI.

India saw the warmest April in 122 years in 2022, which came after its worst March ever, according to reports.

Almost 24,000 people have died in India since 1992 as a result of heatwaves.

India recorded 242 out of 273 days with extreme weather in 2022 (from January to October), or almost one extreme event per day. They include severe heat waves and cold waves occurring simultaneously in the north and west, a drought in the centre of India, significant flooding in the coastal plains, and landslides in the north-eastern region.

A wide range of interconnected systems in the built environment, health, etc. have been severely impacted by the heatwave in the Indian subcontinent. These include frequent and longer power outages, an increase in dust and ozone levels that has caused spikes in air pollution, and an accelerated melting of glacier snow in the northern regions.

Response to the ongoing deadly heatwave is further hampered by the economic recovery from the Covid-19 outbreak. Hence, the economic and public health costs associated with such heatwaves are extremely substantial.

A healthy person resting in the shade could no longer survive heatwaves in India by 2050, according to long-term forecasts

Moreover, they will affect the 310-480 million people's quality of life, economic growth, and labour productivity. By 2050, it is predicted that the ability of people to work outdoors in high temperatures during the day will have decreased by 15% as a result of the heat.

According to the Lancet Research, heatwaves would become more intense from these 2050 baseline projections, affecting over 600 million Indians by 2100.

By 2050 and 2100, respectively, the rising heat is predicted to cost India 2.8% of its GDP and 8.7% of its declining living standards.

Due to its size, rate of urbanisation, and biophysical characteristics, India is currently experiencing a collision of numerous cumulative climatic hazards that co-occur, considerably impacting the hydrological cycle and, as a result, the behaviour of climate extremes.

70 Indian cities are anticipated to have more than 1 million residents by 2025. Progress towards achieving sustainable development of cities and communities will be slowed by the absence of a comprehensive methodology for assessing climate vulnerability.

Given that more than 70% of India's building stock has not yet been constructed, underreporting of legacy vulnerabilities might seriously undermine the country's urban sustainability. This could also halt efforts towards reducing inequality and poverty.

What Can be Expected?

For India, a climate vulnerability index (CVI) that excludes measures of the primary climate change risks/threats (like heat waves) may fail to identify regions of greatest vulnerability to climate change, especially those at the intersection of non-climate, structural, and social-economic factors (indicated through SDGs) that increase sensitivity. These regions are those where climate extremes meet non-climate, structural, and social-economic factors (like heat waves).

Result indicates that by integrating HI and CVI, it is possible to pinpoint real-world climate vulnerability effects that take into account extreme weather events at the state level. As a result, it is simpler to understand how India is doing with the SDGs.