Planning for a hotter world

Vishwas Chitale

There may be a biting chill in many parts of India now, but the record-breaking heat waves of 2024 are not forgotten. The ruling party returned to power with temperatures almost touching 50 degree Celsius in the Indian capital last year. This increasing heat stress remains a major challenge across most states. Nearly 23 states in India are heatwave-prone. In the summer of 2024, India recorded more than 44,000 heatstroke cases and more than 300 heat-related mortalities, as per the bulletin of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This affects public health and economic productivity. Water reservoirs and the energy demand that keeps India powered are impacted too. In June 2024, while suffering from a 10-day long heatwave, Delhi’s peak power demand of 8,647 MW was higher by 16 per cent than that of the previous year.

Monsoons are becoming uneven too, and with significant consequences. According to our research, between 2012-22, various districts in the agriculturally important Indo-Gangetic plains reported a decline of up to 20 per cent in southwest monsoon rainfall. Currently, the average annual crop losses owing to extreme weather events account for 0.25 per cent of India’s GDP. Moreover, the Arabian Sea — with a higher rate of increasing sea surface temperatures compared to the Bay of Bengal — experienced a nearly 52 per cent increase in tropical storm cyclones in the last two decades. But while India’s cyclone early warning system provides coverage to 100 per cent of the cyclone-prone population, its flood early warning system only provides coverage to one-third of the flood-prone population.

In 2024, various states, including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the south and Delhi, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in the north, saw severe flooding, including cloudbursts and flash floods. Following the trend of increased heavy rainfall events in the past decade, we must brace for severely impacted monsoons in 2025 and beyond. The recently announced Mission Mausam and the granular-scale data that will be acquired across various cities under it could enhance urban flood preparedness.

India is currently developing its national adaptation plan and has a golden opportunity to get its priorities right to account for the complex and rapidly evolving climate challenges.

First, there needs to be a detailed risk assessment of the impacts of observed and predicted heat stress at a minute scale, and across sectors. Heat does not impact everyone and everything in the same way. Therefore, identifying vulnerable populations within heatwave-prone cities, such as those with chronic health conditions, senior citizens, and children below six years of age, is crucial to prioritise targeted actions. In addition, the dairy and livestock sector, which accounts for five per cent of India’s GDP, has seen a decline of up to 20 per cent in milk productivity owing to heat stress. This calls for robust adaptation actions for the dairy sector, where the heat challenge could be addressed by low-cost and decentralised renewable energy-based livelihood solutions such as solar chillers.

Second, nearly half of India’s agriculture is rainfed, with the majority of it distributed across the central and southern states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka. Any minor change in the rainfall pattern causes large-scale impacts in the agriculture sector. Therefore, we must revamp crop weather calendars for rainfed crops to account for the recent changes in the southwest monsoon. This requires contextualisation of local cropping practices to suit the changes in the availability of water and moisture. In the last 10 years, the Indian Council on Agricultural Research (ICAR) has developed more than 2,500 varieties of flood- and drought-resistant crops. With the revision of cropping calendars and the incorporation of resilient seeds, climate change-induced crop losses could be reduced significantly.

Third, the disaster risk financing landscape in India must be enhanced, especially for cities. The recently passed Disaster Management (Amendment) Bill 2024 empowers states to strengthen city-level resilience by forming Urban Disaster Management Authorities. This will be crucial in ensuring that necessary infrastructure and finance are made available for cities to mainstream climate resilience. City resilience bonds and green municipal bonds could further help cities mobilise the finance needed for adaptation.

With the 2025 Budget a few weeks away, climate resilience must move from the margins to the mainstream of our financial planning and priorities. It’s a good economic investment — from crops to cities — not just an environmental one.

The writer is Senior Programme Lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)