By Nageshwar Patnaik in Bhubaneswar, August 17, 2019: Once again India is in the news with large parts of the country going through calamitous floods. Recent cyclone, floods and landslides have killed more than 300 people in India, displaced one million and inundated thousands of homes across eight states.

This year’s extreme natural calamities began from May when Fani, a severe cyclone, hit Puri in the eastern Odisha coast with full intensity on May 3 at Puri – and is the third in 150 years to strike in summer with wind speeds of up to 220 kilometer per hour. It was the most dangerous storm in recent years.

The rains from June to September are a lifeline for rural India, delivering some 70% of the country’s rainfall, but they also cause death and destruction each year. At the same time floods are an annual occurrence in India, with little changing in terms of disaster management from year to year. Almost 15% of India is prone to flooding and annually, 2,000 lives are lost while 80 lakh hectares of crop land are damaged worth about Rs 1,800 crore.

Many believe that floods take place when there is heavy rainfall. Experts say there are other factors as well, which contribute to flooding that include – sudden release of large quantities of water from dams and water reservoirs; breach or damage in major reservoirs and dams; limited holding capacity and urbanisation. Unfortunately, these factors are not taken into account for flood risk mapping in our country.

A report submitted to the government by water policy expert and former plan panel member Mihir Shah said, “In addressing the problem of floods, the central focus over the years has been on engineering/structural solutions. Apart from the massive investments in large dams, India has already constructed over 35,000 km of embankments. But these are rapidly reaching their limits… Instead, India needs better weather and flood forecasting, along with flood insurance and possibly the designation of flood diversion areas…”

Ironically, Bangladesh has better forecasting capabilities than India, according to experts. Its Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre website gives details about the rivers and the forecasting sites. It also provides information on the sites where water level is currently on the rise or above the danger mark. But in India, the progress in setting up critical forecasting systems is going on a snail’s pace.

A Comptroller and Auditor General Report said a majority of India’s flood forecast systems have either been washed away or their parts have been stolen! It explained, “Nearly 60% of the 375 telemetry stations set up between 1997 and 2016 are non-operational which defeats the purpose of investing in the modernisation of flood forecast network.” Similarly, a 2017 CAG report found that of the 219 planned telemetry stations, used to forecast floods, only 56 were set up and 60% of existing stations didn’t work.

The Indian government, undoubtedly, has taken several steps to advance disaster risk management (DRM) and improve climate resilience, which include Developing a National Action Plan on Climate Change (2008); Updating the National Policy on Disaster Management (2009), which contains guidelines for the creation of DRM plans at the state level; and Developing the National Disaster Plan (2016), which provides a framework and direction for government agencies throughout all phases of DRM.

Though policies are in place, there is an undeniable lack of their proper implementation at the ground level even as India has emerged as the third worst-affected country due to climate-induced natural disasters. Studies show that, as a result of climate change, the intensity, duration and frequency of weather-related shocks are on the rise.

These natural disasters are the processes through which the earth relieves pressure that might be building up in the crust, reforms river beds, and relieves buildup of atmospheric pressure. When humans are caught in the midst of these events and suffer damage and loss, the events bring disasters to the habitations.

There is no doubt that climate changes pose a significant challenge to poverty reduction, health and development in many developing countries, including India. The whole country will sooner or later face climatic apocalypse as rising temperatures threatens to melt at least one-third of the Himalayas’ glaciers by the end of the century even if the temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C. Melting glaciers in both the Andes and the Himalayas threatens the water supplies of crores of people living downstream.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last year has clearly warned of disastrous consequences if current trends of global warming are not reversed immediately. India will be significantly affected, given its huge population and levels of inequality and poverty. If exposed to the kind of destabilisation the report talks about, the impact on India could be devastating – not just socially but also politically.

Sea level rise will have a disastrous impact on the country, given its 7,516.6 km coastline, and the number of people who live close to and depend on the sea for their livelihoods.

At the same time, deadly heat waves – similar to one in 2015 that killed thousands of people in India and Pakistan – could soon become the norm. It is already late to reverse rising temperatures and minimise some of the harm and particularly, it will not be easy to do for countries like India with limited resources.

With vagaries of climate virtually becoming the new norm, India needs to invest in making its infrastructure climate-resilient and services to equip coastal states to withstand the impacts of extreme events such as floods, cyclones, and storm surges. Undoubtedly, building climate-resilient infrastructure will facilitate reaching the goals set by the Paris Agreement on climate change, as well as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which is the first major agreement of the post-2015 development agenda, with seven targets and four priorities for action endorsed by the United Nations.