Climate changes, flooding out and drying up in Southasia

This past summer a calamity of a scale never before seen in Southasia inundated large parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh, killing more than 2000 people and displacing some 20 million. UNICEF estimates that Bangladesh was the hardest hit, with nearly 880 people killed and more than 36 million people – a quarter of the population – affected. The floods ended up destroying bridges, schools and roads, and shattering livelihoods for tens of thousands as the waters swept away summertime crops. Several Himalayan rivers burst their banks in the Nepal Tarai, as well as across the border in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. But even after the waters receded, Bangladesh's weather-related tragedies were not over for the year. In November, Cyclone Sidr, a 'category-four' storm, swept furiously through the country – flattening houses, damaging buildings and roads, and again destroying thousands of acres of crops. Thousands of people died, and approximately 27 million people were affected – many for the second time in six months.

While Southasia has long been used to the annual flooding of the monsoon, the intensity and unpredictability of the region's rains is becoming striking, for lay and scientific observers alike. Indeed, it is unlikely that anyone will soon forget the cataclysmic scenes surrounding the Bombay floods of 2005, when unprecedented rainfall measuring 944 millimetres in just a single day brought India's financial hub to a complete standstill. The city seemed hardly better prepared: Bombay's dilapidated sewer system turned streets into rivers, leading to more than 1100 deaths and losses estimated at more than USD 250 million. The country's previous single-day record for rain had been back in 1910, when 838 mm fell in Cherrapunjee in July of that year.

The heavy precipitation events of the last five years are increasingly being considered as indications of global climate change. Over the past year, weather researchers have warned that Southasia is likely to receive much more unpredictable rain in the coming decades, bringing greater challenges for its governments as they attempt both to prepare for and to cope with nature's seasonal fury. Such unpredictability has serious consequences. For instance, research in villages in semi-arid region of India – central Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – during the 1990s found that even slight variations in rainfall timing could reduce profits for poor farmers by more than 30 percent, while having a negligible impact on profitability for the richer farmers.

Finding a cause for the changes in Southasian weather patterns is difficult, as the monsoons have always been notoriously hard to predict. Although global climate change – currently the dominant environmental concern – is nowadays often attributed to any change in the weather, the complexity of monsoon science makes it hard to pin down a direct cause-and-effect relationship. It is clear, however, that extreme weather events have become more common over the last 50 years. Compared to 1951, in 2000 Southasia saw twice as many storms that produced rainfall of more than 150 mm a day, a statistic attributed mainly to the fact that the Indian Ocean got warmer during this period. At the same time, however, storms producing moderate rainfall became rarer, and so the overall rainfall has stayed roughly the same. While the catastrophic floods of 2007 cannot be linked directly to climate change, the impact of climate change in the region is not only very real, but its ramifications are becoming increasingly more dramatic.

Thickening the blanket
Earth is unique in that it is the only planet in the solar system that sustains life. One of the many reasons for this is the presence of trace 'greenhouse-gases' in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. These gases act as a blanket, keeping the planet's surface at a life-sustaining average temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. However, to maintain our ever-increasing demands for consumption and development, modern societies have been dramatically enhancing this natural effect by adding additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, mostly through industrial activities and deforestation. In essence, we are 'thickening' Earth's blanket, and inevitably making the planet dangerously warmer. According to the latest estimates by the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), from pre-industrial times to 2005 the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by more than 35 percent.

The IPCC, which recently shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore, has established an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is both real and manmade. In so doing, it has also laid to rest much of the suspicion about the veracity of climate science, as often alleged by a small group of contrarians, most of whom are in the United States. The "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the IPCC's recent report concluded, "as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."

The current observations are already alarming. Over the past 100 years, the average global temperature has increased by 0.74 degrees Celsius, with 11 of the 12 warmest years on record having come between 1995 and 2006. In addition, global sea levels have increased by roughly 20 centimetres since pre-industrial times. Over the next century, the IPCC predicts that the average global temperature will rise anywhere from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees, depending on the action – or inaction – of the upcoming decades. In myriad ways, the global climate system is changing rapidly, unpredictably and with dangerous consequences. These consequences are most severe for the poorer parts of the world, which bear little responsibility for either the present or the past greenhouse-gas emissions.

Perhaps the most threatening long-term ramifications of this ongoing climatic process will come from melting glaciers and rising seas. The Himalayan glaciers are a life-support system for millions of people living in Southasia, slowly releasing water into the vast network of rivers of the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra basins. With the onset of global warming, however, thousands of glaciers located across the 2400 km of the Himalaya are likely to melt rapidly, creating an unimaginable crisis. These glaciers are already receding faster than in any other part of the world, and the IPCC notes that, with the present rate of melting, the Himalayan glaciers will likely shrink from the 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres in the 2030s. Moreover, with a three-degree temperature rise and no change in precipitation, Tibetan glaciers of less than four kilometres in length are likely to disappear altogether.

Such a rapid shrinkage is certainly going to bring more floods and avalanches, as well as to disrupt water resources over the next three decades. Beyond this time, however, the real crisis will emerge as the glacial melt reduces. When this takes place, the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra and other rivers that dissect the northern Indian plains may become little more than seasonal streams – carrying monsoonal flow but little or no snow-melt. Such dramatic changes will affect about a half-billion people in the Himalaya-Hindukush area alone, as well as another quarter-billion downstream who depend almost entirely on glacial waters.

At the same time, the impacts of the associated sea-level rise will also be catastrophic. In the most conservative scenario, global sea level by the end of the 21st century is projected to rise by about 40 cm, with much of the increase coming from the melting of glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland and the Himalaya. Sea-level rise will inevitably boost the number of people affected by floods worldwide. From around 13 million people affected currently, this number is expected to increase to around 94 million, with about 60 percent of this increase happening in Southasia.

In Bangladesh, researchers have estimated the range of sea-level rise by end of the century to be between 0.3 and one metre. A one-metre rise in sea level would inundate 5-17 percent of the land area, directly threatening at least 11 percent of the population. Furthermore, indirect effects, such as increased storm surges and river flooding due to heavy precipitation and the backing up of rivers along the delta, could affect more than 60 percent of the population.

The 1200 islands that comprise the Maldives are only one to two metres above sea level, and are thus most threatened by any water rise. According to the IPCC, sea-level rise would damage the fishing and tourism industries in the Maldives, which in turn threatens to reduce gross domestic product in the country by more than 40 percent. While the Maldives may not completely disappear by the end of this century, scarce natural resources, space limitations, and the impacts of tsunamis and cyclones stand to debilitate the country. In Sri Lanka, most of the coastal wetlands would disappear with a one-metre rise in sea level.

At the same time, monsoon- and cyclone-related floods will also increase. The intensity of heavy rainfall events will escalate, with large increases over the Arabian Sea and the tropical parts of the Indian Ocean, as well as in the northern areas of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Burma. Meanwhile, the number of rainy days will actually decrease over large parts of Southasia. Thus, more rainfall will occur during the monsoon, but over shorter durations – a definite recipe for catastrophic floods. Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, like the recent Sidr, are also expected to become more intense by 2050, causing even more damage in deltaic Bangladesh and the other coastal areas of Southasia, during both the southwest and northeast monsoon seasons.

Food and economic security
The initial impact of these climate changes are already being widely felt, and all indications point to a worsening situation. While such massive transformations will affect the full spectrum of individuals in Southasian societies, the worst ramifications will inevitably be for the region's subsistence farmers. The IPCC has flagged agriculture as the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change in Southasia – this for a sector that employs about 60 percent of the region's labour force, and contributes to 22 percent of its GDP. Moreover, according to a recent World Bank report, agriculture and poverty reduction are strongly linked, in that overall GDP growth originating in agriculture is, on average, at least twice as effective in benefiting the poorest half of a country's population as is the growth generated in non-agricultural sectors.

As such, climate change will strongly affect the food security of Southasians. Acute water shortages, combined with stress brought on by higher temperatures, would adversely affect wheat and, more severely, rice production. The net cereal production in Southasian countries is thus projected to decline by four to ten percent by the end of this century. In Pakistan, climate models simulate agricultural-yield losses of six to nine percent for wheat following an increase in average temperature of just one degree. In Bangladesh, by 2050 rice production could fall by nearly ten percent, while wheat production could plummet by more than 30 percent. In India, per-capita water availability is projected to decline from around 1820 cubic metres per year to as low as 1140 cubic metres by 2050. Nepal, highly dependent on its agricultural sector, will likewise be strongly affected by both the increasing glacial melt in the early part of this century, as well as the eventual drying in the later part.

As sea levels rise, food insecurity and loss of livelihood are likely to be further exacerbated by the loss of cultivatable land, as well as nursery areas for fisheries, due to inundation and coastal erosion in low-lying areas of the Southasian coast. Likewise, salinisation of ground and surface water by the intrusion of seawater into coastal areas is another concern for the availability of fresh water, as well as for fisheries and coastal agriculture in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Already, salt-water inundation is said to have affected 15,000 hectares of paddy fields in the Galle District of Sri Lanka.

More broadly, climate-change impacts are exacerbating already existing problems of poverty and environmental degradation, and threaten any positive step currently being undertaken in the region to uplift marginalised communities. Therefore, climate change can be seen as less of an environmental issue than of a looming humanitarian catastrophe, ultimately threatening global security and survival.

Climate injustice
In the face of increasingly ominous forecasts, climate change demands urgent action in order to address a threat to two constituencies in particular: the world's poor and future generations. With just 15 percent of the world's population, the rich countries account for 45 percent of total carbon-dioxide emissions. On the other hand, low-income countries as a group account for one-third of the world's population but just seven percent of the emissions. This is the main reason why the UN climate-change convention, ratified in 1992, demands that industrialised countries take the lead in reducing emissions.

In terms of emissions per person, an average American emits more than 16 times as much carbon as does an average Indian. However, focusing only on per-capita emissions is also problematic, since there are wide in-country disparities. The stories and images from cities as diverse as New Orleans, Patna or Dhaka tell us that it is the poor and the politically weak in these cities who inevitably suffer the worst consequences of climate change. Therefore, wealth and class boundaries are clearly more important than political boundaries. For instance, a recent report by Greenpeace India reveals that the highest income group in India, constituting one percent of the population, emits four and a half times as much carbon dioxide as does the lowest income group, which comprises 38 percent of the population. Even in the US, African Americans generate roughly 20 percent less carbon dioxide than do white Americans, on both per-household and per-capita bases, yet they face a disproportionate burden from climate-change impacts – as revealed by the shocking images of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The capacity to deal with the impacts of climate change is intimately connected to social and economic development, and this capacity is not evenly distributed either across or within societies. While there is potential catastrophic risk for everyone, the short- and medium-term distribution of the costs and benefits will be far from uniform. Women are particularly vulnerable to climate change, due largely to women's historic disadvantages – limited access to resources, restricted rights and a muted voice in shaping decisions. A recent Oxfam study found that during the 1991 cyclone and floods in Bangladesh, the death rate for women was almost five times higher than for men, as they had less access to ways of mobility than did men. For example, many women were not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative, and so they ended up simply waiting for relatives to take them to a safe place.

In the end, adaptation to, and preparing for, floods, droughts and other natural disasters is largely dictated by wealth and poverty. For the richer part of the world, adaptation is a matter of erecting elaborate climate-defence infrastructure, and of building 'flood-proof' homes. But adaptation in poorer countries might well mean little more than learning how to swim. Such is the disparity and the reality of climate-change adaptation in an unequal world.

The past decade of international negotiations on climate change has not been able to bring about much action on mitigation of emissions, nor have they provided relief to the poor, who are already beginning to experience the impact of climate change in their daily lives. Even after the 'landmark' achievement of the Kyoto Protocol, in which some industrialised countries took on commitments to reduce their emissions, the world's major economies have either provided mere lip service to the issue, or denounced the entire process outright. The US, which is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has not even joined the Kyoto process, and it has continued to create roadblocks in international negotiations that aim towards a stringent set of national commitments for all industrialised countries. Most recently, at the Bali climate-change conference in mid-December, the US insisted on pushing for voluntary "aspirational" goals over any timetable or target, leading Al Gore to declare the US "principally responsible for obstructing progress". Finally, the US relented and was forced to agree to rework international climate agreements by 2009 – after the current administration of George W Bush steps down.

While governments in Bali were at loggerheads, trying to wriggle out of any legally binding target or substantial cut in emissions, the fate of millions of poor people is already in jeopardy. Some 262 million people were affected by climate disasters every year from 2000 to 2004, over 98 percent of them in the developing world. Perhaps for this reason, climate-change impacts still do not register as apocalyptic events in the stories broadcast through the international media, and likewise go relatively unnoticed in financial markets and other metrics of global 'wellbeing'.

Towards sustainable lifestyles
In many Southasian countries, poverty is intimately related to repeated exposure to climate risks. For people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture, variable and uncertain rainfall is a potent source of vulnerability. For urban slum dwellers, floods pose a constant threat. Across the world, the lives of the poor are punctuated by the risks and vulnerabilities that come with an uncertain climate. But what is dangerous for a small-scale farmer living in Southasia might not appear particularly dangerous for the owner of a large, mechanised farm in the United States. Climate-change scenarios for rising sea levels that might be viewed with equanimity from behind the flood-defence systems of London or lower Manhattan might well be regarded with reasonable alarm in the Maldives, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.

Yet, the silence of inaction and a vacuum of leadership currently permeate the globe. Solutions seem either to be embedded within a complex political landscape, as indicated by the political theatre of Kyoto and Bali, or focused on debating the merits of technological and economic solutions. Is cap-and-trade better than a carbon tax? is a common dithering refrain. Should we build new nuclear or wind-based power plants? Is capturing and storing carbon dioxide from power plants feasible?

For Southasian countries, which are more focused on development, it is important to recognise the threat that climate change poses for sustainable development and infrastructure building. For example, tapping hydroelectricity from Himalayan rivers only makes sense when hydrology is stable and there is water in the rivers throughout the year; with the onset of rapid glacial melting, these large projects may no longer be feasible. Similarly, building extensive infrastructure in our coastal cities might be pointless if we are unable to protect them against rising seas.

The political and business leaders in Southasia are not yet fully cognisant of the drastic impacts that climate change will bring upon the region. Or, if they are aware, they are unwilling to do anything about it. Changing this requires a reorientation of goals towards lower consumption (not just by the West, but also by affluent Chinese and Southasians), pricing of materials that include social and environmental costs, greater efficiency of energy use, and 'decarbonisation' of our energy sources (ie, placing more focus on sustainable energy sources such as solar and wind power).

Although much of this has to be led by the rich countries and elite consumer classes, in both the global North and South, Southasian countries must also plan for such a transition sooner than later. Regional cooperation among Southasian countries is also crucial, as climate change will not respect political boundaries. For example, with rising sea levels Bangladesh is bound to be inundated with floods, and Bangladeshis will invariably call upon the neighbouring countries for help. Accommodating these 'climate refugees' will put pressure on the already stretched resources in the region, and could well lead to political conflict between countries and regions.

Leadership is needed not just at the political level, but also on the personal level. As Mohandas Gandhi urged, all of us, at an individual level, need to be the change that we wish to see in this world. While the myriad available small-scale solutions – such as utilising energy-efficient light bulbs, eating more fresh and local foods, driving more fuel-efficient vehicles, and flying less – may seem relatively trivial, small actions undertaken by large groups has been proven time and again to have significant impacts. In the end, dealing with climate change is about political will and adapting to new ways of life – a lifestyle that is more about quality, not quantity. As Albert Einstein said, "We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." Climate change has thrown down the gauntlet to all of humanity. The question now is, will we rise up to meet the challenge in time?

— Sunita Dubey is an activist and freelance writer based in Boston
— Ananth Chikkatur is a Research Fellow focusing on Indian energy and technology policies at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.