NEW DELHI, Feb 28: Serious adaptation policies are required for India to tackle the huge climate crisis, experts said on Monday reiterating that gaps in governance capacity and climate financing need to be addressed in order to strengthen climate resilience.
The reactions came after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report ‘Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, which has warned of catastrophic consequences across the globe, particularly vulnerable regions like South Asia, if emissions are not cut.
Scientist and one of the authors of the report, Anjal Prakash, said urban India is at much greater risk with its increasing share in the country.
“In the next 15 years, we will see 600 million people being added to urban spaces as it is expected that 40% of India would be urban. The urbanisation process helps in achieving economic growth for the country but cities will be at a much greater risk of climate change.
Most of the coastal cities would see sea-level rise, warming of oceans is leading to catastrophic events such as cyclones, heat waves, sea-water intrusion in groundwater bodies, etc. and this would worsen, as per the IPCC predictions.
Stressing the need for cities to be resilient to cater to some of these challenges, Prakash said Surat, Indore and Bhubaneshwar have come up with good examples of local-level adaptation and planning at the city level which is actually feeding into the largest resilience programme.
Highlighting that Himalayan hazards will increase, he said that it is expected that by 2050, we would reach 1.5 degrees Celsius.
the slightest change in climate will have a long-lasting impact on the Himalayan region due to its fragile ecology.
Aarti Khosla, Director, Climate Trends, said that the report shows locked-in impacts of climate change like sea level rise, which will affect South Asia disproportionately.
“With over 7,500 km of coastline, the effects of poor adaptation to such a changing climate and coastline can only be imagined.”
“It will expose a wide range of sectors from agriculture, to construction, finance and energy, but also expose people to varying degrees of vulnerabilities. Many states, nearly half of the million-plus cities, and many municipalities are making climate action plans. While India’s international climate targets are set, unless multi-level climate governance is not established at local, regional, and state levels, the results for India’s ambitious climate targets could get delayed,” Khosla said.
“To combat this surge of crises, developing countries like India will need to significantly scale up their adaptive capacity,” Ghosh said.
As such, India will have to prioritise the climate proofing of livelihoods and its infrastructure by scaling up investments in nature-based solutions. The government also must see to the integration of climate risk assessments into planning at the village, district, city, and state levels. (PTI)
