The never-ending Indian Monsoons: A Climate Crisis.
- Iman Ayesha
- Nov 12, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 28, 2023
The recent monsoons that have extended through November in India, specifically regions of Uttarakhand and Kerala have wreaked havoc amongst the local community. Numerous studies conducted have found that global temperature rise plays a key factor in these erratic storms. Evidence suggests that if monsoons were to continually extend over the years, it would negatively impact the state of wellbeing, economy, and food systems for most of the Indian subcontinent more specifically the farming sector.
The Indian monsoon plays a very important role and determines the yield of rice, wheat, sugarcane, and oilseeds. The Economic Times has highlighted that farming makes 15% of India’s $2.5 trillion economy and employs more than half of its population (1.3 billion). Excessive rains and flooding will destroy annual crop yields which would incur extensive losses not only to local farmers but to India’s overall economy.
Farmers are not the only members of the community fallen victim to this year’s torrential rains, many homeowners have had to vacate their homes due to multiple landslides. The States of Uttarakhand and Kerala have been severely affected due to the heavy rains. Kerala recorded over 40 deaths resulting from collapsing infrastructure.
Results of the recent monsoons; Uttrakhand (left) and Kerala (right).
The overarching cause of such events is human activity. Dating back to the industrial revolution, global greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing drastically. Many studies conducted in North America have also concluded that rainfall is far more intense in urban areas subject to increasing pollution when compared to rural areas.
The World Resources Institute has recorded that India’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs) is dominated by the energy sector, accounting for 68.7% of total emissions. India’s GHG emissions have increased by 335% since 1990 and emits twice as many GHGs as the world average. Despite being amongst the first countries to sign onto the Paris Climate agreement in 2015 India is currently the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US.
India pledged to reduce the emission intensity of their economy by 33-35% compared to 2005 by the year 2030. Despite having the fourth-largest economy in the world, India faces deep inequities and uneven distributions of resources. Recently the country has accelerated its industrial and economic activities through investments into agriculture, infrastructure, power, manufacturing, and automobiles to generate economic growth and demand. India does have the potential to achieve the global climate leader status if they enhance their targets and abandon plans of building coal-fired power plants and phase out fossil fuels for power generation by 2040.
While India has been adopting measures to reduce its carbon-intensive economic activity, its current policy measures targeting sector stimulation will contribute to increased carbon emissions. Although progressive steps to address CO2 emissions across industrial sectors have been adopted, technological innovation, research, green job development, clean energy production, the introduction of e-mobility, and adoption of measures phasing out coal, clean energy resources have the potential for further expansion.
Sources
Katzenberger, A., Schewe, J., Pongratz, J., and Levermann, A.: Robust increase of Indian monsoon rainfall and its variability under future warming in CMIP6 models, Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 367–386, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-367-2021, 2021.
Singh, J., Karmakar, S., PaiMazumder, D., Ghosh, S. and Niyogi, D., 2020. Urbanization alters rainfall extremes over the contiguous United States. Environmental Research Letters, 15(7), p.074033.
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