India may suffer many climate-based disasters

Bharati Chaturvedi in the Hindustan Times: By now, most of us have nearly forgotten Irene, the hurricane that wasn't quite. We shouldn't. Perhaps the hurricane itself is not due to climate change, but data from blogs all over suggests the speed of the winds, the amount of rain and the intensity with which the waves hit were greater because of effects of climate change. When, just seven years ago, the film The Day After Tomorrow, was released, it showed snowfall in Delhi and devastating floods in New York. We laughed at this exaggeration.

But what seemed absurd in the near past is reality today. Perhaps the hurricane itself is not due to climate change, but data from blogs suggests the speed of the winds, the amount of rain and the intensity with which the waves hit are all greater than they would be otherwise.Let’s take this seriously. India is expected to suffer many climate-based disasters. The government must learn from this scare and plan for climate change adaption in the 25% of the country’s most vulnerable areas.

This means plan with communities, make resources available and share all the information transparently. In cities, it includes planning to absorb more migrants and basic living standards for everyone. The current budget was a cop-out as far as climate change goes. Watch out for the next budget, and see how serious the government is this time....

A ship run aground on a beach in Goa, shot by Vikasmta, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license