East India extremely vulnerable to climate change: Analysis
By Jayashree Nandi
Eight eastern states of Jharkhand, Mizoram, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, and West Bengal are most vulnerable to climate change and should be prioritised for funding and efforts to capacitate them against the associated risks, a report released by some of India’s top institutes has assessed.
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The authors clarify that the vulnerability indicators are relative and the assessment does not imply that Maharashtra is not vulnerable in an absolute sense. “It should also be noted that this vulnerability ranking is based on a set of indicators that were used in this assessment with a specific objective. These indicators predominantly focused on socio-economic drivers as well as those related to primary sector-based livelihood along with some biophysical and institutional factors,” the report said.
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“The study reiterates the need for the 2020s to become a decade of climate action and building climate resilience. As a next step, it is also important to highlight the complexity and non-linearity of climate risks across Indian states. The focus needs to be on climate-proofing of geographies, economies and infrastructure at the state and district level.
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Another international study has flagged India’s vulnerability to climate change this week. Monsoon rainfall in India is likely to become stronger and more erratic according to an analysis by a team of German researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany (LMU) that compared more than 30 climate models.
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