Exposed by rains, is infrastructure in India climate-change ready?

Vibha Sharma

Chandigarh, July 13

In New Delhi, water from Yamuna has breached the all-time high mark in more than 45 years and overflowed the roads and key areas, including the Secretariat housing the chief minister’s office. Normal life and traffic has come to a standstill—this is the reality of India’s national capital as on date.

Northern India has witnessed record rainfall in July this monsoon season. Several persons have died in Himachal Pradesh while Punjab, Haryana and Delhi witnessed severe flooding, affecting life and essential services like water supply.

Blame it on climate change or confluence of weather systems but the question is whether India is climate-change ready.

Observers say that unprecedented rains in Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi may have taken people by surprise but they have also exposed the ill-preparedness of the authorities concerned, including the gaps in planning keeping in mind the reality of climate change.

Inundating low-lying areas, the record rains triggered flash floods and landslides, claiming lives and causing extensive damage to infrastructure—roads, bridges, houses— a repeat of the devastating 2013 flash floods of Uttarakhand.

But were any lessons learnt, they wondered, as rain-triggered fury and landslides in hills, inundation of cities and loss of lives repeated the sorry state of infrastructure planning and haphazard development in the country

Climate change, a reality

The fact is even as cumulative rainfall this monsoon crossed the normal mark on the back of the deluge in the north, several parts of the country continue to reel under drought-like situation.

The stark difference between different parts of India is a stark reminder of changing patterns—excess rains in some parts and deficit in others. As climate warms, extreme events are gaining strength—a fact warned and repeated by environmental reports since the turn of the century.

From Atlantic hurricanes to the Southwest monsoon in India, storms are becoming intense and rain patterns more erratic.

Studies have also pointed to the connection between human-caused climate change and the intensity of extreme weather events. So it is not just the rain that one has to be worried about, extreme heat waves have also become two times more likely due to the influence of climate change, say experts.

Experts say that increasing temperatures and heat waves highlight the need for immediate action. While the civic authorities need to be prepared for such events in advance, given that intense events are inevitable, environmentalists say infrastructure development, planning and upkeep needs to be climate proof.

Climate proofing

Climate proofing is a process integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation measures into the development of infrastructure projects. However, the human disregard of rules and norms for construction on banks of rivers and streams in hills and plains prove it is free for all there.

Haphazard construction and encroachment of flood plains have added to the environmental stress. Floodplains are right of the river and meddling with them is bound to see the repercussions, warn experts, calling for an urgent need to regulate the construction activity in the seismically fragile Himalayan region and the flood plains.

According to a report on the EU website, “Specifically, for infrastructure with a lifespan beyond 2050, the guidance stipulates that the operation, maintenance and final decommissioning of any project should be carried out in a climate-neutral way, which may include circular economy considerations, such as the recycling or repurposing of materials. The climate resilience of new infrastructure projects should be ensured through adequate adaptation measures, based on a climate risk assessment.”

75 per cent of Indian districts extreme climate hotspot

Climate change is a global threat to security in the 21st century, say experts. According to a study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water—CEEW—“more than 75 per cent of Indian districts, which are home to over 638 million people, are extreme climate event hotspots”.

It says that the frequency of associated flood events such as landslides, heavy rainfall, hailstorms, thunderstorms, and cloudbursts surged by over 20 times between 1970 and 2019.

“Post-2005, at least 55 or more districts witnessed extreme flood events year-on-year, exposing 97.51 million people annually.

“In the last 15 years, 79 districts recorded extreme drought events year-on-year, exposing 140.06 million people annually. The yearly average of drought-affected districts increased 13 times in this period.

In the last decade alone, cyclones hit 258 districts. The number of associated cyclonic events increased 12-fold between 1970 and 2019.