Flooding of hilly regions in India is only likely to increase in coming years, a study by the Asian Development Bank has predicted.

The report, Assessing the Costs of Climate Change and Adaptation in South Asia, says, “Water-related hazards in the region are bound to increase with climate change.”

“Between 1990 and 2008, more than 750 million people in South Asia were affected by at least one type of natural disaster, resulting in almost 230,000 deaths. Half of the disaster events have been due to floods and landslides, in turn associated with extreme weather events,” the report says.

It added that going forward such climate change-related events would become even more destructive, especially in India where the “Himalayan region has become even more vulnerable to natural disasters spawned by melting glaciers.”

Even as northern States, such as Uttarakhand, are already facing catastrophic floods, which have taken hundreds of lives in just two monsoon seasons, in 2013 and this year, the ADB study predicts that the frequency of such floods, which has increased in recent decades, will rise.

Further, it says that that output of rice, which forms a crucial part of India’s economy as well as diet, is facing a big threat from climate change.

Especially vulnerable to climate change, South Asian countries such as India, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, are likely to see a decline in rice production by as much as 23 per cent by 2080, the report says. Given the rising population, which in turn results in decline in arable land area (that also reduces farm output), this is estimated decline is alarming.

If India, along with the rest of the world, doesn’t pull up its socks and work on mitigating climate change, economic losses to the tune of about 2 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050 for these countries, including India. This could quickly escalate to about 8.8 per cent of GDP by 2100 if mitigating measures aren’t put into place.

Related Topics