New Delhi, April 11: India is ill-prepared for fresh water scarcity, sea-level rise, crop damage and heat waves that global warming portends for the subcontinent, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned.

“We have resilient communities, but we’ll need to anticipate and adapt to address the impact of climate change,” said Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman who is also the head of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi.

Outlining the anticipated impact of global warming in Asia, Pachauri said, while higher temperatures are expected to reduce grain yields, food insecurity may also be exacerbated by the loss of cultivated land and nursery areas for fisheries by inundation and coastal erosion of low-lying areas.

India and Bangladesh are especially susceptible to increasing levels of salt in groundwater and surface water along the coastal regions because of the rise in sea level. The IPCC had earlier this year predicted that global temperatures may rise between 1.8 degrees Celsius to 4 degrees Celsius in the coming decades.

“Calcutta and Mumbai are particularly vulnerable,” Pachauri said. “The mangrove forests in the Sunderbans — a frontline defence for Calcutta — are among the Asian mega-deltas which are threatened.”

Presenting elements of the IPCC report finalised last week, Pachauri said the per capita water availability in India will decline from 1,820 cubic metres in 2001 to as low as 1,140 cubic metres by 2050.