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Climate Report
India ranks ninth globally among countries most impacted by climate disasters over the past three decades, with nearly 430 extreme weather events killing more than 80,000 people, according to a new report. The Climate Risk Index (CRI) 2026 released by the environment think tank Germanwatch at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, on Tuesday said climate disasters affected 1.3 billion people and caused economic losses worth almost USD 170 billion from 1995 to 2024. The report said the country's losses stemmed largely from repeated floods, cyclones, droughts and heat waves that have intensified with global warming. Events such as the 1998 Gujarat cyclone, the 1999 Odisha super cyclone, the 2013 Uttarakhand floods and recent deadly heat waves are among those that contributed to India's high ranking on the index, it said. The report said India's situation represents a "continuous threat" rather than isolated disasters, as recurring weather extremes have steadily eroded development gains and undermin
Ten years after the Paris Agreement was adopted, a latest UN report has showed that countries are making progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions but not fast enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The 2025 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Synthesis Report, released by the UN Climate Change on Tuesday, said the 64 new national climate plans submitted between January 2024 and September 2025 would collectively cut emissions by about 17 per cent below the 2019 levels by 2035. Though this marks "real and increasing progress", the report said that "major acceleration is still needed in terms of delivering faster and deeper emission reductions and ensuring that the benefits of strong climate action reach all countries and peoples". NDCs are climate action plans that every country makes under the Paris Agreement. These plans set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and outline how each country will adapt to the impacts of climate change. Together, these
The world experienced an average of 41 more days of extreme heat in 2024 due to climate change, a new report said on Friday. According to the European climate agency Copernicus, 2024 is set to end as the warmest year on record and the first year with a global average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. A yearly review report by two groups of climate scientists -- World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central -- said the world saw an average of 41 more days of dangerous heat in 2024. Small island developing states were hit the hardest, with their people experiencing over 130 additional hot days. The scientists identified 219 extreme weather events in 2024 and studied 29 of them. They found that climate change contributed to at least 3,700 deaths and displaced millions in 26 extreme weather events. "It is likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change this year is in the tens or hundreds of thousands,"
None of the G7 members are on track to meet their existing emission reduction targets for 2030, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday. The analysis by Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute, comes ahead of the G7 climate, energy, and environment ministers' meeting in Venaria Reale, Italy, during April 28-30. The G7 collectively aims to achieve a 40-42 per cent emission reduction by 2030 but existing policies suggest that it will likely achieve only 19-33 per cent by the end of this decade, the analysis showed. This is at best around half of what is needed and would lead to greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 exceeding a 1.5 degrees Celsius compatible level by around four gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Such a shortfall in ambition does not provide the leadership signal needed from the world's richest countries, making up around 38 per cent of the global economy and responsible for 21 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, the .
Countries are planning to produce around 110 per cent more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to a new report. This comes despite 151 countries having pledged to achieve net-zero emissions and the latest forecasts that suggest global coal, oil and gas demand will peak this decade, even without new policies. The Production Gap Report 2023 tracks the discrepancy between governments' planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius. The report says the near-term increase in coal production is led by India, followed by the Russian Federation, both planning significant increases in coal production through 2030. India aims for self-reliance and considers the coal industry of paramount importance for income and employment generation. Around one-fifth of India's coal demand is met through imports, which exposes the country to price ...
The world needs new institutions to drive climate action and sustainable development goals (SDGs) as organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are not designed to address these challenges, India's G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said on Friday. Participating in a discussion on "India's G20 Presidency - Forging Actionable Agenda for Global South" at the Vivekananda International Foundation, Kant talked about the challenges as India holds the presidency of G20 -- an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union (EU). He said the challenges are "external" and referred to the Ukraine war and the prevailing situation in the West. "We have seen the war going on for one year, we don't know how it will shape up in the coming days. G20 is essentially a consensus building platform," he said. He said geopolitics in Europe is not improving as the Ukraine-Russia war has been going on for a year and is worsening. Kant said G20 is important a
Most countries in Asia have failed to achieve a global minimum target of protecting at least 17 per cent of land by 2020, according to a study based on data from 40 countries. Under current trends, the outlook for achieving the UN Global Biodiversity Framework's 2030 target to protect at least 30 per cent of land is bleak, with Asia set to miss this by an even greater margin, the researchers said. To counter the global biodiversity crisis, at the 2010 UN Convention on Biological Diversity, almost 200 countries pledged to protect at least 17 per cent of their terrestrial environments by 2020 (known as Aichi Target). To investigate whether they achieved this, researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, with collaborators in Asia, analysed data from official reports submitted to the World Database on Protected Areas. The study, published in the journal Communications Biology, found that only 40 per cent of Asian countries achieved the target of a minimum of 17