Extreme weather has cost India billions in recent decades, especially in agriculture and construction. How can India’s economy be revamped to face the future?
00:01It's early evening in Delhi and a bunch of co-workers are out playing soccer after work.
00:07Their employer pays a lot of money for each training session.
00:10Every year, local companies compete in a corporate league.
00:21This is Yaman Reiki's business model.
00:23A passionate soccer player himself, he brings recreational athletes together through his company Parklife.
00:29His business is very dependent on the weather.
00:51Even if the football pitch is flooded, he still has to pay rent for the session he has booked.
00:56So every time it rains heavily, he makes a loss.
01:00Yaman Reiki's company is operating in something of a niche market.
01:04But many industries in India are impacted by the weather.
01:08From the construction industry to tourism to energy and agriculture.
01:12All sectors are feeling the financial impact of extreme weather.
01:17Purna Mitha Dasgupta works at the Institute of Economic Growth at the University of Delhi.
01:25She and her team are investigating the effects of climate change on the economy.
01:30In the past 30 years alone, India has been hit by 400 extreme weather events.
01:35I think broadly, we are looking at about a loss of 80,000 lives and possibly about 300 to 400 billion dollars worth losses in the last three decades.
01:52So that's a huge amount to reckon with.
01:57Floods produced by monsoon rains, hailstorms, extreme heat waves.
02:03India has had it all.
02:05And elsewhere on earth, the average temperature has risen since the start of industrialization.
02:10As a result, it rains more heavily than before.
02:15And it's hotter.
02:17But Delhi can also get extreme cold snaps in winter.
02:20Scientists have been able to link the intensity of individual extreme weather events directly to climate change.
02:27We had also looked at the flooding, the extreme rainfall and flooding and landslides in Kerala that happened last year.
02:35And again, we also did look at, as part of another study, we revisited the very catastrophic flooding that happened in Uttarakhand in 2013.
02:45So in both of these cases, we found that climate change has increased the intensity or the amount of rainfall that fell during that event was 10 to 12 percent more than, you know, an event of a similar rarity happening in the past without climate change.
03:06Crops fail and people are unable to work due to extreme heat.
03:11That in turn means the price of food or other goods and services rises due to shortages.
03:17The economy needs solutions to the ever-growing challenges posed by climate change.
03:22So far, we have concentrated mostly on, you know, disaster management framing to tackle the problems associated with heat.
03:39But the game changer in terms of resilience to heat would be in terms of what we managed to do in the long run.
03:48Growing heat resistant crops with staggered harvesting times helps to minimize the climate risks in agriculture.
03:56Green parks and gardens provide cities with shade and cooling during heat waves.
04:02And the other is to really keep thinking about how to do sustainable cooling in our homes, in our workplaces.
04:13That's another big area.
04:15Whether we do it with renewable energy strategies, microgrids or we find other ways, which I'm sure will evolve.
04:25But that is where we need to move.
04:28In flood-prone areas, coastlines and riverbanks need protecting.
04:33Building practices need to be adapted.
04:35That's the only way to save lives and preserve the habitat of local wildlife in the long term.
04:40Some Indian states are now investing much more in adapting to climate change.
04:45In the lead, you have Maharashtra, Gujarat and some other states.
04:52And even some of the conventionally lesser developed states have started progressing in that direction, like Orissa, for instance.
05:02And this is something data is showing you, that if you invest in adaptation, the payoff back that you get, the payoffs are much higher than the costs of doing so.
05:16Climate change and the associated warming of the earth is a gradual but steady process, one that can't be easily stopped.
05:26Reversing it is really hard. Greenhouse gas emissions must go to zero as fast as possible.
05:34Obviously there have been weather extremes and protection against these extremes has not been perfect in the past either.
05:41So climate change is really just amplifying the risks and introducing some new risks that have not been present in a particular region thus far.
05:51For now, entrepreneurs like Yaman Reiki, like everyone else, has to live with the consequences of advancing climate change.
05:59He'll need to find ways of adapting to the new normal.
