A transboundary monsoon (across countries sharing a common border) represents shared vulnerabilities and risks and hence adaptation measures must include integration of the climate change scenarios with a ‘nexus’ approach, says Sanjay Srivastava, Chief, Disaster Risk Reduction at UN-ESCAP.
The latest Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) shared by countries bring forth a water-energy-food nexus approach. Resilient agricultural land use, water-resilient infrastructure, and nature-based solutions are key components of the nexus approach, Srivastava told BusinessLine in the context of the fallout from a horrendous monsoon in Pakistan.
Monsoon on a warming planet
Taking anticipatory steps to safeguard food, water, energy, and livelihoods is a key challenge. A comprehensive risk management approach is a critical means to make food systems, especially agri-food production, more resilient. This will result in transformative adaptation and resilience to riskier monsoon seasons on a warming planet, he noted.
More than 1,500 people were killed and 33 million others were impacted in one of Pakistan’s worst monsoon seasons in over a decade. The Pakistan Meteorological Department reported that the national rainfall was 243 per cent above average, while Balochistan and Sindh provinces registered +590 per cent and +726 per cent excess precipitation in August.
An ESCAP analysis indicates temperature increases of 1.5°C and 2°C will bring the highest impact of heavy precipitation to South Asia, followed by agricultural drought and hot temperatures/heatwaves.
Climate crisis hotspot
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had remarked that the Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding as floods submerged much of the country.
In a recent video message, he called South Asia a ‘climate crisis hotspot’ where people were 15 times more likely to lose their lives due to climate change impacts.
Tackling riskier monsoons
The Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2019 estimates the annualised disaster losses to be up to $675 billion, nearly 85 per cent of which are caused due to monsoon-related droughts, floods, and tropical cyclones. The Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2021 highlights that adding biological hazards to the disaster risk scape increases current annual average losses to $780 billion.
Under a worst-case climate scenario, annualised losses will double to $1.4 trillion or 4.2 per cent of regional GDP. Therefore, the key to developing resilient communities in South Asia is to effectively tackle the impending riskier monsoon seasons, Srivastava says.