India is among the top 10 most climate-impacted countries in the world, according to a global report released in Belem on Tuesday evening, Brazil time.
The report shows that heatwaves, storms, floods and other extreme weather events have hit many vulnerable countries hard in recent years, including India.
The Climate Risk Index, 2026, by Germanwatch, compiled based on data from the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) on extreme weather events and socioeconomic data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, says that over 8,30,000 fatalities and ₹4.5 trillion have been lost due to climate-triggered events over the last three decades.
The report states that Dominica, Myanmar and Honduras have been most affected by extreme weather over the past 30 years. It states that while almost all countries in the top rank are in the global south, five European countries and the US appear among the top 30, indicating the quickly spreading pan-global impact of climate change.
According to the report, around 40 per cent of the worldwide population (of over 3 billion) currently live in the 11 countries that have been most severely affected by climate change-triggered extreme weather events over the past 30 years.
India, the ninth most impacted country, has a population of nearly 1.4 billion. China is ranked 11th.
Libya is fourth on the list, followed by Haiti, while the Philippines, recently impacted by the typhoons Kalmaegi and Fung-wong, is placed at the seventh position.
France occupied the overall 12th position, highest among the industrialised countries, followed by Italy at 16th. The US, whose President Donald Trump appears to be in denial mode on climate change, is ranked 18th.
"In total, the index recorded over 9,700 extreme weather events between 1995 and 2024, with more than 8,30,000 fatalities and over $4.5 trillion in direct damage, adjusted for inflation. Heatwaves and storms pose the greatest threat to human life when it comes to extreme weather events," Laura Schäfer, one of the Climate Risk Index authors, told The Telegraph.
"Storms also caused by far the greatest monetary damage, while floods were responsible for the greatest number of people affected by extreme weather," she said.
"Countries such as India, Haiti and the Philippines face tremendous challenges as they are hit by floods, heatwaves, or storms so regularly that entire regions can hardly recover from the impact until the next event hits," said Vera Künzel, the co-author of the index. The expert pointed out that the result underlines the importance of more funding to address loss and damage caused by climate challenges.
On Monday, the first day of the global climate summit COP30 in Belem, many called for applying for the loss and damage-linked UN funds, a first of its kind and hailed as historical by many. However, activists frowned on the paltry $250 million in the fund's kitty.
Experts said that India had consistently been affected by climate change. The earlier index of Germanwatch, released in 2020, showed that India had recorded the maximum number of deaths — 2,081 — from climate-triggered extreme weather events in 2018. India was also second in terms of economic losses in 2018.
"The latest report underlines the huge climate-change impact on India and calls for policy changes not only at the global level but also at the national level to ensure that the vulnerable populations can counter such impacts more strongly in future," an Indian expert at Belem said.