Indian Climate Policy - Global Commons Institute

38 | MEHRA
unsettling the local crop economy. Extreme rainfall events have occurred with
significant human and economic loss in major cities and states such as Mumbai
(2005), Bihar (2008), and Karnataka (2009). Experts are now expecting one of
the worst floods in Kashmir’s history as a result of melting of Himalayan
glaciers. 2 These impacts alone could severely test India’s governance systems
and its institutional and social resilience. Unless dealt with effectively, they
could also quickly turn into political challenges.
For the 700 million people in rural India who are dependent on the most climatesensitive
sectors for their livelihoods – agriculture, forests, and fisheries – the
future will bring declining crop yields, degraded lands, water shortages, and ill
health. It will also bring confusion and helplessness as people lose their
traditional capacity to “read” the weather and adjust accordingly. When the rains
do not come and when the natural world does not behave as it should, societies
which have survived by observing the world and adapting to it lose essential
coping skills. Therefore climate change, at a most profound level, will
disempower India’s vast rural poor by rendering traditional knowledge useless. 3
CLIMATE CONFLICTS
It will also bring conflict. India is acutely resource-dependent, reliant on the
monsoon for food security and Himalayan glacier melt for water security in many
regions. The destabilization of both – as projected by climate models and
observed trends – will spell conflict as communities vie for access to scarce
natural resources, including arable land to grow food. India already has the
largest number of insurgencies of any country, a fact well-concealed from
international debate. Many of the resource-conflict hot spots such as in the
Eastern and Northeastern parts of the country are already regions with wellestablished
political insurgencies.
The costs of climate change are currently being counted in rupees and paisas.
The Indian government says that it is already spending 2.6 percent of its annual
gross domestic product on adapting to the impacts of climate change. Military
analysts suggest that the frequency of flooding in South Asia has doubled in the
last thirty years, leading to an economic loss of US$ 32 billion. 4 In coming
years, however, the costs could well be measured not just in compromised
development, but also in serious military conflict and loss of life as societies
become overwhelmed by the scale and pace of climate-induced destabilization.
At present, India resorts to calling in the army when natural disasters overwhelm
2 Shafi Wani, Arif. “Valley’s Erratic Climatic Change Worries Experts,” Greater Kashmir, 5 October 2009.
3 Mehra, Malini. “Climate Change: Why India Must Take Leadership,” Centre for Social Markets, August 2007.
4 Air Marshall AK Singh. “Impact of Climate Change on India,” presentation, March 2009.