For decades, despite the warnings of scientists, climate change and its diverse impacts were thought to be distant, abstract phenomena in India and around the world. But the ever increasing body of new granular data leaves no scope for such complacency and denial. For instance, scientists at the School of Climate Change and Sustainability, Azim Premji University, have released a study titled Indian Coastal Region: Climate Projections 2021-2040 highlighting the severe effects that climate change will have on India’s coastal regions in the coming years. According to the study, the characters of two of India’s principal sources of rainfall — the southwest monsoon and the northeast monsoon — are going to be altered majorly, disrupting weather patterns in their catchment regions. Coastal India will bear the brunt of these worrying transformations. About 40 coastal districts are expected to witness summer temperatures jump by over
1°Celsius by 2040, triggering dangerous heat stress and completely throwing off the normal patterns of monsoon. The impact on western and eastern coasts would be contrasting. While Gujarat’s Kachchh region will receive a massive 31% spike in rainfall, coastal Odisha and West Bengal — where agriculture is rainfed — will see the volume of rainfall shrink. The threats — salinity being one — to fragile ecosystems like the Sundarbans would be aggravated as well. The transformations of the northeast monsoon will cause coastal Maharashtra and Gujarat to receive much higher winter rain by 2040: the projections are a 32.7% rise for Mumbai and increases up to 44% for districts like Ahmedabad, Devbhumi Dwarka, and Porbandar.
With 2040 just 16 years away, the window to take adaptive action is getting narrower. But the response from India’s policy establishment has not been fleet-footed thus far. A mix of mitigatory action must be expedited to survive rising heat and precipitation deluges. On the one hand, there should be emphasis on the construction of sea walls and breakwaters, installation of early warning systems, risk-informed land planning combined with nature-based solutions such as the planting of mangroves as well as the implementation of risk financing instruments. Coastal cities — from Mumbai to Kochi — must replace impermeable surfaces with those that can protect inhabitants from heat and also slow down flooding. The principal challenge, though, is the paucity of time. Substantial resources — financial, technical, administrative and political will — must be directed to ward off this crisis on the horizon.