Loss, damage take centre stage as India battles climate extremities

India joined hands with 24 developing countries to push for climate disaster funding

The last few days of the ongoing climate conference COP26 will mull over a more immediate problem – loss and damage caused by climate extremities. No other country, apart from Scotland, has yet committed any loss or damage fund at the conference.

While the Indian government has joined hands with 24 like-minded developing nations to push for climate disaster funding from developed countries, experts pointed out the lack of a plan by the former.

India is especially vulnerable to disasters since 95 per cent of its coastal districts are considered extreme-level hotspots for climate risks.

Cyclones, in the last five years, have alone caused destruction of 5.9 million hectares of crop area, with over 720 reported deaths and damages to 2.97 million houses. Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) estimates the sea level along the Ind­ian coast, on an average, to be rising about 1.7 millimetre annually.

Cyclones were regular across India’s eastern coast, but in recent decades, there has been an increase in the western coast as well, in terms of frequency and intensity of extreme events. “What is also happening is that increased drought-like conditions across India trigger the cyclogenesis process by which depressions turn into deep depressions, and deep depressions into cyclonic storms across the rapidly warming Indian Ocean,” said Abinash Mohanty, programme lead, risks and adaptation, Council of Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). 

Indian officials, who are a part of the negotiating team at COP, said India was planning to push the developed world to fund climate disasters. “The ‘polluter pays principle’ should apply here. It should be the historic polluters. But if we are asked to contribute, we will,” said a senior official. However, experts pointed out that India has not decided on a budget amount. “India needs to assess how much loss would be suffered due to climate extremities. It then needs to relook at the policies,” said a climate expert.

The government is still in its nascent stages of coming up with a climate resilient infrastructure. But experts indicate that the thre­ats attached to the rising sea level may result in coastal inundation in low-lying areas. This may lead to tsunamis, storm surge, coastal flooding and coastal erosion.

Experts indicate that the majority of states will have to speed up their efforts in terms of bringing in proper warning systems and implementing mitigating efforts among the vulnerable communities.

Phase 1 of the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) has already been implemented in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. In Andhra and Odisha together, 535 multipurpose cycl­one shelters, 1,087 km of roads, 34 bridges and 88 km of saline embankments have already been made under the project.

However, phase 2 of the project, which was cleared in July 2015 and was supposed to be over by March 2020, is yet to take off fully. Tamil Nadu, which was hit by many cyclones (Vardah, Ockhi, Gaja, Nivar and Burevi) in the last five years, however, was not covered under the first two phases.

At COP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Infrastructure for Resilient Island States’ (IRIS) initiative, which aims to promote climate resilience of infrastructure assets in small island states. However, a strong stand on loss and damage funding is yet to come from India.