Without immediate action, global warming is set to reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, home to over 60% of the world?s population, says a new report ? Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific.
The report presented jointly by Teri, ActionAid, Greenpeace and WWF and with a foreword by RK Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel prize-winning Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, says India has close to 700 million people living in rural areas who depend on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forests, and fisheries for their livelihoods.
Its ecosystems such as riversheds, mangroves, coastal zones, forests and grasslands are already overburdened by environmental pressures from commercialisation, excessive resource use and indiscriminate dumping of industrial and agricultural waste.
India already has 250 million people living in absolute poverty with little capability to cope with climate change. Around 400 million living in the Ganga basin will further be affected by water shortages in the near future. Many more will be affected by floods and droughts due to erratic monsoons and the fast depletion of Himalayan glaciers.
Around 600 million Indians depend on agriculture, which, unlike the rest of the economy, has been crawling along at a growth rate of less than 2% per annum. Production has been stagnant, per capita availability of food is declining, suicides by farmers and hunger deaths are on the rise, and agrarian distress is acute and widespread. These trends will be further accentuated due to climate change.
Some vulnerable sections of society like women, tribal communities and scheduled castes will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change. Women, for example, will spend greater amount of their time in arranging for food, fuel and water for their families.