Climate Change Impacts Indian Districts: ESRI India Report

New Delhi, Sep 6 (PTI) Over 85 per cent of Indian districts are prone to at least one major climate event like flood, drought, cyclone or heat wave, and they need to calibrate existing infrastructure to mitigate the losses and handle threats arising out of climatic changes, a report by GIS software firm ESRI India and IPE-Global said on Friday.

IPE Global, along with GIS software company ESRI India, launched a tool to help local authorities take appropriate action in mitigating the impact of natural calamities, especially floods.

"85 per cent of Indian districts are prone to at least one of the major extreme weather patterns, which are floods, flood, drought, cyclone and heat waves. Cities will have to look at ways to manage changes that are happening in climate. Their infrastructure has to go through a revamp so that urban flooding can be minimised," ESRI India Managing Director Agendra Kumar said during the report launch.

More than 60 per cent of districts in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Assam are witnessing more than one extreme climate event, the report said.

Kumar said that the study found a trend that more than 45 per cent of Indian districts are witnessing a swapping trend, which is with some flood-prone areas now becoming more susceptible to droughts, and vice versa and a combination of both hazards.

The study said several districts, including Srikakulum, Cuttack, Guntur, Kurnool, Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda, and Paschim Champaran, among others, have seen this reversal from floods to droughts.

Districts like Rajkot, Surendranagar, Ajmer, Jodhpur, and Aurangabad have also exhibited both flood and drought.

"Southern India, particularly states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, are witnessing a notable increase in drought conditions. Bengaluru Urban, Pune, Ahmedabad, Patna, and Prayagraj districts are witnessing the maximum swapping trends," the report said.

Districts in Tripura, Kerala, Bihar, Punjab, and Jharkhand are observed with maximum swapping trends, the report said.

Author of the study and IPE-Global, Head for Climate Change and Sustainability Practice, Abinash Mohanty said the current trend of catastrophic climate extremes that makes 9 out 10 Indians exposed to extreme climate events are a result of 0.6 degree Celcius temperature rise in the last century.

"Recent Kerala landslides triggered by incessant and erratic rainfall episodes, floods in Gujarat, the disappearance of Om Parvat's snow cover and the cities getting paralysed with sudden and abrupt downpours is a testament that climate is changed. Our analysis suggests that more than 1.47 billion Indians will be highly exposed to climate extremes by 2036, and these numbers peak," Mohanty said.

He said now, the approach to handle extreme climate patterns has to be hyper-granular to mitigate the loss of lives and damage to resources.

"Embracing hyper-granular risk assessments and establishing climate-risk observatories and infrastructure climate funds should become a national imperative to safeguard the Indian economy, especially for sensitive sectors like agriculture, industry, and large-scale infrastructural projects from the vagaries of climate change," Mohanty said.

The study has recommended the establishment of a Climate Risk Observatory (CRO), a risk-informed decision-making toolkit for decision-makers at the national, state, district, and city levels under its National Resilience Programme and the establishment of an Infrastructure Climate Fund (ICF) to support sustained investment into climate-resilient critical infrastructure and foster locally-led climate actions.