The last monsoon in India ranks among the 10 most expensive and impactful climate disasters of the year, according to a global report published in London around Saturday midnight.
The new Christian Aid report, “Counting the Cost 2025”, has found that the top 10 disasters stemming from heat waves, wildfires, droughts and storms have cost the world more than $120 billion in 2025. The monsoon impact in India, alongside Pakistan, is ranked fifth based on financial losses.
“…India’s monsoon season started with the wettest May since records began. By September, the country had received 8 per cent more rainfall than the average, with 2,277 flood and heavy rain events recorded,” the report stated.
The report underscored “the escalating cost of climate change, with fossil fuel companies playing a central role in driving the crisis… the greatest toll (being) felt in the world’s poorest countries”.
It identified the year’s 10 costliest extreme events influenced by the climate crisis, each causing damage worth over $1 billion. No continent was spared from crippling climate disasters this year, with at least one extreme event in each of the six populated regions of the world finding space in the report.
Among these, the Palisades and Eaton wildfires in California came out at the top, leading to a loss of over $60 billion.
Extreme rainfall, flooding and landslides in India and Pakistan during June-September have cumulatively led to a loss of $5.6 billion.
“From June to September, large parts of India and Pakistan experienced an exceptionally heavy monsoon season. Torrential rains began early, triggering deadly floods, landslides, cloudbursts and flash floods, particularly in mountainous regions.
Across the region, rivers overflowed, farmlands were inundated, glacial melt worsened flooding, and thousands of towns were submerged,” the report stated.
Asia accounted for four of the top six costliest disasters, with flooding in India and Pakistan killing more than 1,860 people, the report added.
The report pointed out that most of these estimates were based only on insured losses, meaning the true financial costs were likely to be higher. The human costs are often not factored in.
“These disasters are not ‘natural’ — they are the predictable result of continued fossil fuel expansion and political delay,” said Joanna Haigh, professor emeritus at Imperial College London.
“This year has once again shown the stark reality of climate breakdown… The poorest communities are first and worst affected. These climate disasters are a warning of what lies ahead if we do not accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels,” Christian Aid CEO Patrick Watt.
A recent assessment by the think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on disasters in India during 2025, mainly based on official data, highlights the devastating impact of disasters, particularly the monsoon.
“India faced extreme weather events on 99 per cent of days in the first nine months of this year, marked by heat and cold waves, lightning and storms, heavy rain, floods and landslides. These events claimed 4,064 lives, affected 9.47 million hectares of crops, destroyed 99,533 houses, and killed approximately 58,982 animals,” the CSE report stated, adding that the damage was likely to be higher as the data were incomplete.
The CSE report shows that India witnessed extreme weather on all 122 monsoon days in 2025, spanning 35 states and Union Territories.
“Heavy rain, floods, and landslides occurred daily, followed by lightning and storms on 104 days, cloudbursts on 17…,” the report said, adding that Himachal Pradesh was the worst-hit, with natural disasters affecting it on 103 days, followed by Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh on 94 days each.
