Indian government’s reliance on its Climate Vulnerability Index may underestimate the impact of heatwaves on the country’s developmental efforts
A research article “Lethal heatwaves are challenging India’s sustainable development” has come out with dire revelations about the heatwaves that have wreaked havoc on the plant in the last few years.
The paper highlights an important point that India's progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) may be hampered or even reversed as a result of the heatwaves' enormous pressures on the nation's agriculture, public health, and other socioeconomic and cultural systems.
“Moreover, the Indian government’s reliance on its Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI), which may underestimate the impact of heatwaves on the country’s developmental efforts. An analytical evaluation of heat index (HI) with CVI shows that more than 90% of the country is at extremely cautious or dangerous levels of adversely impacting adaptive livelihood capacity, food grains yield, vector-borne disease spread, and urban sustainability.”
The study's findings corroborate the most recent heatwave trend across the Indian subcontinent since Northern states are particularly vulnerable to larger temperature anomalies.
Almost 95% of northern India is covered by HI ranges of severe caution and risk, making it especially important to ensure SDG success. For instance, SDG-2, 3, 8 and 15, which cover agricultural productivity, job security, and health, are related to the most frequent causes contributing to high climate vulnerability in these states.
India saw the warmest April in 122 years in 2022, which came after its worst March ever, according to reports. Over 24,000 people have died in India since 1992 as a result of heatwaves.
Additionally, the Indian subcontinent's heatwave has had a significant impact on a wide range of interconnected systems related to the built environment, health, etc., including frequent and longer power outages, an increase in dust and ozone levels that have caused spikes in air pollution, and an expedited melting of glacier snow in the northern regions. The ongoing deadly heatwave is further complicating the response as the economy recovers from the Covid-19 outbreak. “Thus, such heatwaves’ public health and economic burdens are incredibly high. Long-term projections indicate that Indian heatwaves could cross the survivability limit for a healthy human resting in the shade by 2050,” mentions the report.
The findings further demonstrate that heatwaves will severely impede SDG progress at the urban scale by looking at the urban heat risk in Delhi.
According to projections, by 2050, the capacity for outdoor labour (such as construction workers working outdoors in hot weather) will have decreased by 15%. Furthermore, according to a Lancet Report, heatwaves would become more intense from these 2050 baseline projections by 2100, affecting roughly 600 million Indians. By 2050 and 2100, respectively, it is anticipated that the rising heat will cost India 2.8% of its GDP, 8.7% of its GDP, and a decrease in living standards [5, 8]. In addition, a current World Meteorological Organisation analysis showed the connections between deadly heatwaves and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), indicating that the projected increase in global mean surface temperature will have an impact on all 17 SDGs.
“India is currently facing a collision of multiple cumulative climate hazards co-occurring due to its size, urbanisation rate, and biophysical characteristics, significantly influencing the hydrological cycle and consequently affecting the behaviour of climate extremes.”
India recorded 242 out of 273 days with extreme weather in 2022 (from January to October), or almost one extreme event per day. These include severe heatwaves and cold waves occurring simultaneously in the north and west, a drought in the centre of India, significant flooding in the coastal plains, and landslides in the north-eastern region. India will see increased flooding due to more frequent precipitation, cyclonic storms, global warming, heat waves, and sea level rise by the year 2100.
India currently uses a national Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) that was created by the Department of Science and Technology based on the SREX framework developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to measure its climate vulnerability. The CVI is a composite index that takes into consideration India's socioeconomic qualities, way of life, biophysical aspects, institutional characteristics, and infrastructural factors. Additional SDG indicators were matched to these indicators. The mapping of the CVI indicators to the SDG was done using the Government of India's SDG indicators, major domains of impact, and keywords that match the SDG. When a CVI indication met all of these requirements, it was allocated to the particular SDG.
With regard to SDG-3 (Good health and well-being) and SDG-15 (Life on land), Andhra Pradesh is at grave danger in HI. The CVI classification, however, rates these SDGs as modest. The SDGs that are most important to West Bengal that will be negatively impacted by the same extreme danger HI range are SDG-3 (Good health and well-being), SDG-5 (Gender equality), SDG-8 (Decent work and economic progress), and SDG-15 (Life on land). This indicates that these SDGs were already stressed in the state-specific SDG because the CVI Range for these SDGs was likewise at high values.
This state is particularly susceptible to flooding and tropical cyclones in addition to heatwaves. While the impact of extreme weather events has been more pronounced, the rate of SDG growth is slower, according to a trend analysis of the last 20 years from 2001 to 2021 on the SDG progress and mortality caused by extreme weather events. India's global SDG ranking has dropped over the past three years (2019–2021) as a result of its inability to meet the goals for 11 of the 17 SDGs. The majority of the 11 SDGs in which India lags behind are crucially connected to climate action. SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 13 (Climate Action) performance and readiness in India have considerably deteriorated. Due to the close correlation between these SDGs, this becomes serious.
Over 80% of Indian states are under the 'danger' HI range. On the other hand, several states are ranked as moderate or low by the CVI. It is crucial to draw attention to these measurement inconsistencies because, as conclude, the absence of HI accountability in vulnerability mapping can impede SDG development and the capacity for climate adaptation. For instance, Tamil Nadu was given a low CVI score, which is reflected in its SDG targets (SDG-2, 8 and 15). This indicates that, although having a low level of climate sensitivity in this area, heatwaves can have a substantial influence on the state's socioeconomic situation, way of life, and biophysical quality.