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Resilience in Climate Change: Why Prevention and Vulnerability Mapping Takes Precedence

In April 2024, the ‘State of Climate in Asia’ report, published by the World Meteorological Organisation, made a few eye-opening discoveries about climate fatalities in India; around 110 people in India died due to heat strokes in the year 2023. The report also underlined that in August, India experienced record-high temperatures and a significant decrease in precipitation. At the same time, heavy precipitation in May, June, and July, as well as rainfall and flooding, caused considerable loss of life across India. Additionally, the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) in 2023 reported that around 8060 people died due to accidental causes in 2022, 35% of them being due to lightning strikes.
Understanding fatalities like this makes little attempts to prevent them in the future. A key part of safekeeping people from climatic events depends on two main exercises: firstly, mapping and understanding climatic changes before disaster strikes and preparing for disasters accordingly. The second is identifying the most vulnerable sections of society and directing policy interventions towards them. While these exercises may appear independent of each other, they are in reality dependent on each other to a large extent.
Regarding the first element, in India, the practice of climate mapping is not without its faults. There is a lack of sharper and more precise forms of locating climate risks. For example, in heatwave maps, spatial hazards need to be identified and marked, to redirect resources towards that specific region. For resource-scarce countries like India, this would be especially useful. Additionally, there are serious problems with India’s Early Warning Systems (EWS). Deshpande (2022) writes that they are often inaccurate. In the case of cyclone Asani, which took place in 2022, the EWS could not detect that the cyclone would move towards Andhra Pradesh. Around 30,000 hectares of crops were affected and three people died due to Asani in Andhra Pradesh. Very recently, the Geological Survey of India (GIS) launched The Landslide Forecasting Centre to better predict where landslides might occur. A local warning system for regional threats is also in the works. These systems use sensors to detect movement on hill slopes and warn households in the regions via text messages when there is a danger of landslides. Local warning systems, however, cannot point towards the exact slope that might be affected due to the landslide. Additionally, these systems are expensive and they need to be combined with rigorous awareness campaigns for landslide awareness for suitable effect, an initiative which GIS has been undertaking at local levels.
Consider the case of lightning strikes. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) in 2023 reported that around 35% of the accidental deaths in India were due to lightning strikes. This indicates a need for efficient and systematic EWS for lightning in India. An example of an efficient early warning system is present in the state of Odisha. By 2019, the Odisha government had established an agreement with Earth Networks, an organisation that provides environmental intelligence data to clients to alleviate climate risks. Since then, the state has reported a 30% reduction in deaths related to lightning strikes, compared to the previous few years. The warning system, which works by disseminating warning messages to people through messaging on mobile phones and mobile apps, sends these messages 45 minutes before the strike occurs. However, despite these measures, lightning strikes continue to cause deaths in the state. Most recently, between the course of two days in August 2024, 15 people have died due to lightning strikes. States like Madhya Pradesh are still lagging, as it has not categorised lightning strikes as a natural disaster despite 340 people dying due to lightning between 2022-23.
Secondly, structural inequalities are rarely considered when disaster resilience plans are made. Consider the case of households which do not have access to piped water. The 78th round of the National Sample Survey of India, conducted in 2023, found that almost 67% of rural households need access to piped water. This is significantly a problem for rural women, who usually venture outside their households to fetch water. These women are not counted in research that looks at occupational heat stress. In India, women spend around 500% more time than men doing unpaid labour for the household, but frequently it is not considered work that is a heat risk because the work is done indoors. In reality, heat exhaustion is felt indoors as well. In countries like India, women are at particular risk of stillbirth, preterm births, lower birth weight, gestational diabetes, severe dehydration, blood clots and so on. These risks get exacerbated during times of extreme heat. When heat affects people in a manner that is not directly visible, or when it impacts rural settings, it can be difficult to incorporate health impact data. Ultimately, the lack of data affects recognising thresholds for EWS. The lack of establishing a threshold is also a problem for disasters like landslides. Intensity duration thresholds for rainfall and debris flow have not yet been established by India, mainly because of a historical lack of records of this information. This potentially complicates EWS’s ability to assess the occurrence and intensity of a landslide.
Policy outcomes have not sufficiently managed to catch up with the anthropogenic factors that have pushed climate change. Mortality rates due to climate change could be decreased, if there was better planning on improving the livelihoods of vulnerable groups to prevent them from being exposed to the worst effects of climate change. Additionally, there needs to be greater attempts to recognise vulnerable groups outside the established parameters of vulnerability. For example, to improve EWS, there needs to be greater inclusivity of vulnerable groups and affected groups. Any EWS that makes use of mobile phone alerts would need to consider that only 31% of women in India own mobile phones. There is a need for locally-led initiatives to spread awareness about preventing exposure to lightning.

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