Climate change is impacting the poor severely - and we are doing little to help them

Climate change will impact India's poor severely

A 2009 report says that at least one-third Indians (some 400 million) face poverty and discrimination, and lack of educational opportunities; and 60 percent are dependent upon agriculture for their livelihoods. Those who lack financial resources, adequate education and who depend on agriculture for sustenance, will be disadvantaged under climate change because they have few choices but continued dependence on shrinking or uncertain resources. 

Millions of subsistence and smallholder farmers in India will experience hardship and hunger through being less able to predict climate conditions, requiring government relief programs on a massive scale. Their plight may act as a force that can change governments, strain public budgets, and foster unrest. 

Some (or many) of these workers will migrate to urban areas, placing stress on cities. Climate change will cause "uncontrollable" escalation in migration in South Asia, including India.The need to add to or replace infrastructure affected by climate change (e.g., in the energy and transportation sectors, as well as irrigation systems) will present additional economic costs.

India's adaptive capacity to adjust to climate change is low

The impacts of climate change will be felt differentially, depending upon how well a society can cope with or adapt to climate change, that is, its adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity is defined by the IPCC as, “The ability of a system to adjust to climate change  to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.” 

India's adaptive capacity ranks low - at 119 out of 160 countries ranked for adaptive capacity in 2005. Although countries like Morocco and Haiti rank still lower, many others who are also struggling to become developed countries, rank far higher - Indonesia, Mexico, China and the Philippines. 

Adaptive capacity in India varies by state, geographical region, and socioeconomic status. Where adaptive capacity is low, the potential is greater for impacts to result in displaced people; deaths and damage from heat, floods, and storms; and conflicts over natural resources and assets. 

Many Indian states have limited resources and lack robust disaster management plans. Because of these factors, India's disaster response record has been mixed, with delayed response, lack of early warning systems and resources to undertake measures like mass evacuation, inadequate coordination among various government departments, failure to keep essential stores (e.g., sandbags, medicines, and life-saving equipment) on hand, and inadequate coordination with the Army and other service organizations, as well as donors. As an example of disaster response, in 2007 the New York Times reported a United Nations official as saying that about 2,800 people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan had died in monsoonal floods (“the worst in living memory”). For survivors, the land damage meant there would be no near-term agricultural work for millions of landless laborers, leaving them to rely on the sporadic support of aid agencies and government relief organizations. The condition of the 31 million people affected in India was covered internationally but was not featured either in New Delhi newspapers or on national news channels.