Government must take climate change as a serious wakeup call

Is the Indian gover nment doing enough to counter the adverse impact of climate change? From a snow-less Gulmarg, to a semi-dry Wular Lake, in Kashmir, to lack of drinking water in Himachal Pradesh, another Himalayan state famous for its glacier-fed perennial rivers, climate change is playing havoc across India.

The government of India along with the individual state governments are behaving like the Ostrich (which buries its head in sand thinking as it can’t see the enemy, the same applies to its enemy), as far as developing sustainable, long-term strategies to combat climate change induced impacts are concerned.

Scanty rains and less precipitation leading to very less snowfall, coupled with rising temperatures are causing water resources to dry up in the Himalayan states. This in turn is causing glaciers to shrink, leading to less river water discharge, and dried up springs.

India’s hydroelectricity output fell at the steepest pace in at least 38 years during the year ended March 31, government data showed.

The 16.3% drop in generation from the country’s biggest clean energy source was for the first time since Prime Minister Narendra Modi made commitments to boost solar and wind capacity at the United Nations climate talks at Paris in 2015.

A five-year low in reservoir levels means hydro output will likely remain low during the hottest months of April-June. Hydro’s share in India’s total power output fell to a record low of 8.3% during the fiscal year ended March 31, Grid-India data showed, compared with an average of 12.3% in the 10 years through 2020.

As a stark contradiction to the government’s apparent indifference to climate change impacts, eighty-five per cent of people surveyed in India by a Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and CVoter, said they are already experiencing the effects of climate change, and more than a third of them have either already moved or considered moving because of extreme weather events such as severe heat, droughts and floods.

According to a report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, weather-related disasters triggered over half a million (above five lakh) internal displacements in India in 2023 and around 2.5 million (25 lakh) in 2022.

Severe heat waves have impacted a large number of people in parts of India for three years in a row, affecting health, water availability, agriculture, power generation and other sectors of the economy.

Deadly floods left a trail of destruction in the Himalayan states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand last year. A glacial lake outburst flood in Sikkim in October led to the collapse of a hydroelectric dam, killed more than 100 people, and affected more than 88,000.

According to the Yale Program survey, in India only 64 per cent people usually receive warnings from the government agencies ahead of an extreme weather event.

78 per cent people according to the survey said the government should be doing more to address global warming and its micro impacts by climate change induced extreme weather events in India.

With around 50 per cent of its population engaged in agriculture and other climate-sensitive sectors, the government has a major role to play in mitigation, adaptation and crisis management.