Climate Change: Implications for the Indian Population

Abstract: The purpose of this paper titled ‘Climate Change: Implications for the Indian Population’ is to discourse on the changes that we can expect till the end of the 21st century, due to global warming. It aims to discuss the physical changes like rising sea levels and increased mean temperatures, and their effect on the general population of India. In terms of area, India is a large country, the topography of the country is varied, having long coastlines, large delta plains, and even high mountain ranges. Although we cannot be sure, it may well be that the different reliefs will respond differently to climate change.

Within this large area exists a large population, with people living in a varied set of conditions and of different economic backgrounds, with about 20% of people living below the poverty line, and a still large enough population living in just above absolute poverty conditions, we can be sure that they will be affected adversely if their living environments are altered.

People living in rural areas will also suffer greatly because of the lack of access to facilities, at the same time those living in cities and of sound financial condition may not experience the same level of inconvenience. These are the scenarios that this paper will aim to discuss.

Introduction: In the current world scenario, it is being said that Climate Change is the single largest challenge that will affect each and every organism on Earth. The long-term effects of climate change have been in discussion for a long time now and although we cannot be exactly sure how they will turn out, the prospects certainly don’t look very pleasing. In its Fifth Assessment Report as published in 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) put forward its predictions toward what changes we can expect in the global situation. The Synthesis Report of the same confirms that human influence on the climate system is clear and that it is growing all across the world; the IPCC states that it is now 95 percent certain that human activities are the main cause of the current global warming. And that the more the human activities continue to disrupt the climate, the greater will be the risks of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on people and ecosystems all around the world. Without going into details and figures, we can say that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased significantly since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century

In the past few decades, we have observed that the changes in the usual weather patterns are having consequences that are affecting natural and human ecosystems all over the world, indicating the sensitivity and the fragile balance of these ecosystems. The most affecting of these are the changes in weather extremes; an increase in warm temperature extremes and subsequent decrease in colder temperature extremes, an increase in high sea levels, and an increase in the number of high precipitation events for a region. And these scenarios of weather anomalies are only expected to get worse; the heat waves will become more frequent and last longer, as will precipitation events. The oceans will continue to get warmer and acidify further. Mean sea levels are expected to rise. The risks associated with these changes will not only continue to rise, but there will also arise new risks for both human and natural systems. For human ecosystems, these risks are quite unevenly distributed and are certainly greater for the disadvantaged sections of the community.

Climate Change in Indian scenario:

The current climate scenario for India isn’t very assuring; India is already experiencing a warming climate. Observations on the data by the Indian Metrological Department indicate that there has been a decline in monsoon rainfall since the 1950s. Climate change is also manifesting itself in the rise in extremely hot days (temperatures exceeding 35° C) across Indian cities.

A region’s vulnerability to temperature changes depends on several factors such as access to infrastructure (electricity, roads, and water connections) and dependence on agriculture. According to the World Bank central districts in India are the most vulnerable to climate change because they lack the infrastructure and are largely agrarian. It can be said that different areas will be affected differently.

Considering the vast and varied geography of India, the effects of climate change will be just as varied.

· The coastal cities, which happen to be major metropolitans and are powerhouses of the Indian economy like Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai will be well affected as the average elevations of these cities is less than 10m. Vast populations and businesses will be displaced and turned into climate refugees.

· The long coastline houses a significant portion of the total population, both rural and urban, which will be affected by rise in sea levels, which in turn will leave them more prone to cyclone and storm surges. Mumbai has the world’s largest population exposed to coastal flooding, with large parts of the city built on reclaimed land, below the high-tide mark. Rapid and unplanned urbanization further increases the risks of seawater intrusion

· The majority, if not all, of the rural population, are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture as their main source of income. Agriculture will be well affected by the change in weather and precipitation patterns, anomalous behavior of these will definitely affect food yields. Most of the North-Indian agriculture is dependent on mountainous rivers which owe their origin to winter snows. Any disruption in snow patterns will affect agriculture yields for the rest of the agricultural year. More than 60% of India’s agriculture is rain-fed, and so, the whole practice of agriculture, from sowing to harvest is dependent on the arrival of monsoons. In such a scenario, rainfall in an abnormal manner is highly detrimental to crop yield. Even without climate change, India’s groundwater resources are overexploited.

· Rising temperatures have been found to compound the spread of disease and epidemics. Considering the low-hygienic conditions of most cities, this is certainly a matter of concern. Malaria and other vector-borne diseases, along with and diarrheal infections which are a major cause of child mortality, are likely to spread into areas where colder temperatures had previously limited transmission. Heatwaves are likely to result in a very substantial rise in mortality and death, and injuries from extreme weather events are likely to increase.

· Climate change is expected to have a major health impact in India- increasing malnutrition and related health disorders such as child stunting — with the poor likely to be affected most severely. World Bank estimates that child stunting is projected to increase by 35% by 2050 compared to a scenario without climate change

A literature review of a paper by Burgess et al., [2014] is given below:

The paper makes use of a study, titled ‘The Unequal Effects of Weather and Climate Change: Evidence from Mortality in India’ to understand the extent of the risk to which these disadvantaged sections of society are subjected to. The study collects data from ‘Vital Statistics of India’ publications in the post-independence period (1957–2000), the district level statistical data on mortality, general health, and other parameters that directly or indirectly indicate the standard of living of inhabitants. The part that is of concern to this paper is the relationship that seems to exist between the warm temperature extremes and the other indicators of living standard. The study brings to light the fact that in India there is a stark difference in the general living conditions between the rural and urban areas, and so the effect of weather anomalies is much more in the rural areas, whereas in urban areas the change observed is not as much.

The theoretical framework of the study within which to examine the potential for weather variation to pass through into mortality is first described. Weather variation can cause human health to suffer because extreme weather conditions put human physiology under stress or exacerbate the disease environment. In this framework, households can choose to spend a share of their scarce income on health-improving goods that enhance the probability of survival in the face of such a ’direct’ weather-induced health shock. Complicating matters, however, is the fact that agriculturally-engaged agents’ real incomes also depend on the weather. That is, even in absence of direct effects of weather, agents’ mortality risk may rise due to the reduction in their income and subsequent reduction in health-improving goods.

Background and Data:

Urbanization in India has been slower than that of other countries. There are many differences in the incomes and expenditure of rural populations and their urban counterparts. Urban households are on an average richer than rural households, and urban populations are not as exposed to fluctuations in prices of foods as rural households. Urban and Rural data sets are taken separately; for economy and other vital statistics. These are then compared with weather indices for the same period.

Various Data Sets Collected:

Mortality :

Death tallies are given in the Vital Statistics Data, for infants, and for all those above the age of also one, by rural and urban areas separately. Despite there being compulsory registration of births and deaths, it is said that these are under-reported.

Weather:

Weather effects are quantified simply as the temperature of an area. To account for missing values, data from a gridded dataset is taken that uses sophisticated climate models to estimate daily temperature and precipitation records for 1-degree latitudes and longitudes. The temperature distribution is recorded in form of two variables. The first one categorizes daily mean temperature into one of eleven groups of temperature ranges. The second one records the cumulative number of days that exceed 36°C. The study also considers the chronological distribution of these high-temperature days; whether they occur in the growing or non-growing season of crops.

Data on Economic Outcomes in Rural India

Agriculture plays an important role in the economy of rural areas and the health of rural citizens who draw their incomes from it directly or indirectly. Three parameters are considered that indicate the condition of agro-economy in rural areas.

Agricultural Yields

Measured annual, district-level yields by aggregating over the output of each of the 27 crops covered in the World Bank dataset (these crops accounted for over 95 percent of agricultural output in 1986). To do this we first create a measure of real agricultural output for each year (using the price index discussed below) and then divide this by the total amount of cultivated area in the district-year.

Agricultural Prices

An agricultural price index is constructed for each district and year which attempts to provide a simple proxy for the real cost of purchasing food in each district-year relative to a base year. Our simple price index weights each crop’s price (across the 27 crops in the World Bank sample) by the average value of district output of that crop over the period.

Real Agricultural Wages

A second important metric of rural incomes (in addition to agricultural productivity, discussed above) is the daily wage rate earned by agricultural laborers. The World Bank dataset contains information on daily wages, as collected by government surveys of randomly chosen villages in each district and year. All figures are given in nominal wages per day and are then converted into an equivalent daily rate to reflect the (low) degree of variation in the number of hours worked per day across the sample villages.

Data on Economic Outcomes in Urban India

The functioning economy of urban India is different from that of rural India. For analyzing the effect of temperature fluctuations on the urban economy, certain parameters are considered. The statistics on India’s urban economy are not as detailed as those on India’s rural, agricultural economy. All of the sources listed below report data on urban outcomes at the state level, whereas all of the rural equivalents introduced above were available at the district level. These parameters considered are:

Manufacturing Productivity

India’s manufacturing sector (especially its ‘registered’ or formal manufacturing sector) is almost entirely located in urban areas. For this reason, state-level registered manufacturing productivity (real output per worker) is considered as a measure of the productivity of the urban area of each state in each year.

Urban Consumer Price Index

The index is collected (by the National Sample Survey Office) from urban locations and is based on weights drawn from National Service Scheme surveys of manufacturing workers. The standard practice is followed which is the use of manufacturing workers’ CPI as a CPI that reflects urban prices.

Real Manufacturing Wages

To construct this variable, data on nominal (registered) manufacturing wages, as surveyed by the Annual Survey of Industries and published in the annual Indian Labour Yearbook, which was collected by Besley and Burgess [2004] is used. Nominal manufacturing wages divided by the urban CPI variable introduced above is used to create a measure of real manufacturing wages.

Implications of Credit Constraints:

Implications of credit constraints are also discussed. In such a situation facilities that can prevent mortality cannot be made use of. It is stated that in the presence of a financial system that relaxes borrowing constraints will result in weather shocks to have a smaller impact on citizen’s survival.

Results:

Urban and Rural Areas: From the available data, analyzed according to the framework, it is indicated that there is no strong temperature-income relationship in urban India, which stands in stark contrast to the results for rural areas that indicate that incomes are temperature-dependent in rural areas.

Growing v/s Non-growing seasons:

As many rural citizens depend on agriculture, either as laborers or cultivators, weather shocks in the growing season might depress productivity employment more in the growing season than outside of it. In particular, the agronomy literature suggests that high temperatures can retard plant development, which primarily occurs during the growing season. In non-growing season these effects are much less pronounced.

Temperature and Mortality:

A relationship is seen between mortality rates and high-temperature days in rural areas. Specifically, days with a temperature exceeding 31°C, relative

To a day in the 20°C to 22°C range, increase the annual mortality rate by at least 0.5% with the effect increasing with temperature.

The study finds that even one standard deviation increase in high-temperature days in a year has significant effects on rural life; statistics show in such a situation, agricultural yields decrease by 12.6% and real wages by 9.8 %. The increase in annual mortality for rural populations is 7.3 %.

By contrast, in urban areas, there is virtually no evidence of an effect on incomes and a substantially smaller increase in the mortality rate (of about 2.8% for a one standard deviation increase in high-temperature days). It is also found that greater availability of credit mitigates the mortality effects of high temperatures in rural areas, presumably by facilitating consumption smoothing.

Finally, with all else(adaptive or mitigative technologies) held constant, the estimates imply that global warming will lead to meaningful reductions in life expectancy in rural India by the 2015–2029 period and quite large declines by the end of this century.

Conclusion:

A proverb in Kashmiri goes:

“The river flowed for eight years, and the river bed stayed damp for sixty years.”

The age-old saying that remarks how people come and go, but their deeds continue to live on is perfectly adequate for our situation. It is now well established that climate change is indeed taking place, at an alarming rate, and even our predicted best-case scenarios, in which we impose total control and effectively cease all greenhouse gas emissions, are something to be fearful of.

These forecasts will have to be dealt with, one at a time and so different strategies will be needed for different situations. Keeping in mind this profound effect of weather on the economic activities of Indian citizens, particularly rural citizens who depend on basic agriculture (either as cultivators or laborers) for their livelihoods, some adaptive measures must be devised.