Painting a scary picture of what is in store in the near future as heatwaves become intense, and a routine feature in India, a study has said that nearly 90 per cent of the country is in the “danger zone” of heatwave impact and almost all of Delhi is at risk of severe heatwave impacts, which is not reflected in its recent State action plan for climate change.
The researchers at the University of Cambridge reported in PLOS Climate explained that though, India currently uses a national Climate Vulnerability Indicator (CVI) to measure climate vulnerability and make plans for adaptation, it doesn’t have a physical risk indicator for heatwaves, which is a key missing factor that would help policymakers consider how extreme heat actually impacts the Indian population.
The new study is the first to include a “heat index” to measure the recurring impacts of Indian heatwaves on the country’s population. The index measures how hot the human body feels relative to the surrounding conditions when humidity and air temperature are added together.
The IMD has already sounded an alarm saying that most parts of India are likely to see above-normal maximum temperatures from April to June.
The researchers also analysed that India’s global ranking according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Group (SDGs) has gone down in the last 20 years because it hasn’t met the goals for 11 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, all of which were very important for SDG 13 (Climate Action).
The study which comes close on the heels of an analysis by the Centre for Policy Research of India’s Heat Action Plans (HAPs) suggests that the CVI underestimates the main risks and threats of heatwaves to the Indian population because it does not include any kind of heat stress measure. This missing element also makes it harder to identify areas of the country, like Delhi and other larger urban areas that are most vulnerable.
“So, we could figure out how extreme heat really affects people and in which parts of the country,” said first author Dr Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow at the University of Cambridge. “A heat stress measure which identifies the impacts and the parts of India where the population is most vulnerable to recurring heat waves would help to make state Heat Action Plans being created across India more effective.”
Some of those unidentified areas at the intersection of climate extremes and non-climate, structural and social-economic factors (shown by SDGs) may also be at risk of increased vulnerability to the impacts of extreme heat.
Researchers used publicly available data on state-level climate vulnerability indicators from the Indian Government’s National Data & Analytics Platform to classify severity categories. They then compared India’s progress on its SDGs over 20 years (2001-2021) with extreme weather-related deaths during the 20-year period from 2001-2021.
The CPR in its HAPs’ analysis noted that most of them are not built for local contexts, not suited to the risks faced by local populations while many were underfunded, have weak legal foundations and also insufficiently transparent.