Explained: 50 Years From Now, What Will Be Impact of Climate Change on India?

Climate change will impact the spread of diseases – in terms of the types of illnesses and the regions they affect.

A farmer walks with a calf on a parched lake bed at drought-hit Hukunda near Chikmagalur in Karnataka. 

(Photo: PTI)

In an earlier explainer – titled 'Climate Change Effect: What Will India Look Like 50 Years From Now?' – we delved into how India is likely to change by the year 2070, with the impacts including millions being displaced from the coastlines, frequent floods in parts of the country, and extreme heatwaves and drought in the plains.

In this follow-up explainer, we examine the likely impact of all these climate change factors.

From drops in food security, water security problems, and energy crises to the erosion of natural life, and loss of homes and human lives, how should Indians expect life to be impacted by climate change, 50 years from now?

Read on.

Water Security

As of 2011, only about 30 percent of rural India had access to running water and toilets, according to India's census. Heatwaves and unpredictable rainfall patterns are set to make this much worse in South Asia.

Population growth is set to deplete India's blue water reserves (freshwater in lakes and rivers) by over 40 percent by the year 2050, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

This is a problem for India because unlike other countries, the country's consumption of blue water far exceeds its consumption of groundwater or green water.

The depletion in blue water reserves is just the tip of the iceberg. As temperatures rise, India's rivers are more prone to flooding because of melting glaciers, and at the same time, are running dry because of unpredictable rain patterns.

A large number of India's rivers like the Ganga and the Yamuna are fed by glaciers. Increased glacial melt, a consequence of rising temperatures, leads to rivers flooding more frequently, both displacing the people living along the coast, and further denting India's access to clean water.

This means that we're likely to see more floods but simultaneously experience fewer monsoon rain days, which the country heavily relies on for food and survival.

This is expected to widen the gap between extremely dry days and days with increased precipitation, further affecting access to clean water, as noted in a 2013 report commissioned by the World Bank Group from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics.

While some studies state that glacial melt will lead to increased run-off (water coming into a river water system from sources such as rainfall, melting snow, and groundwater) and more water supply could potentially offset increased water demands, the problem here is that it is unevenly distributed – between days with heavy flooding and rivers overflowing, and days of aggravated water scarcity.

But there are solutions to this problem.

With increased glacial melt, there's potential to use the excess water to meet India's water needs, but not without the necessary infrastructure.

India has begun work towards this end by building 99 major/medium irrigation projects, according to the Ministry of Jal Shakti. But, according to the World Bank, much larger investments are needed in water infrastructure if the country hopes to benefit from this increased run-off.

Food Security

Without climate change, crop production in India is set to rise by as much as 60 percent by the 2050s. However, as per a World Bank report titled 'Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience', if climate change continues as is, this could lead to a 12 percent drop in this number.

According to the report, this shortfall will need to be met through nearly double the imports of crops and food; otherwise, India runs the risk of its population being underfed.

This underfeeding is set to increase child stunting in India by 35 percent by the year 2050, as compared to a scenario without climate change.

Once more, this isn't too alarmist a school of thought, because since the 1980s, India's rice and wheat yields have steadily fallen by approximately 8 percent for every 1°C rise in seasonal growing temperatures.

Crops like rice, wheat, maize, and sorghum are highly sensitive to temperatures and once a certain heat threshold is exceeded, they give much lesser yield. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that wheat yield in low latitude areas of India could fall by as much as 50 percent, if temperatures continue to rise.

Per capita crop production is set to fall by at least 10 percent by 2050 and around 15-20 percent across all regions of India, with continued warming.

Energy Security

According to the International Energy Agency, India's energy demands are set to rise by 3 percent every year till 2030. At present, a large chunk of these power generation demands are met by two sources for energy – hydroelectric and thermal. Climate change is set to affect both because of increased temperatures and water scarcity.

While the link between decreased water supply and hydroelectric energy generation is fairly obvious, the same can't be said for water supply's relationship with thermal energy.

Thermal energy, and most power generation, is a heat-intensive process. It generates a lot of heat, which is often managed with water or other cooling systems.

An increase in air and water temperatures because of climate change puts additional pressure on these cooling systems, either slowing or stopping power grids for longer intervals.

In simple terms, this means electricity will become far more expensive, and far less accessible to the average person – widening a supply gap that already exists.

"Only 62 percent of the South Asian population (including Afghanistan) has access to electricity, including 62 percent in Pakistan, 66 percent in India, 41 percent in Bangladesh, 43 percent in Nepal, and 77 percent in Sri Lanka... This indicates that there is still a major gap in electricity supply to households—especially in rural areas," notes the World Bank in its 'Turn Down the Heat' report.

Increased Disease Spread

Climate change will have a significant impact on the spread of diseases, both in terms of the types of illnesses that occur and the regions they affect.

According to a 2021 study, increased temperatures might facilitate the spread of over 10,000 new zoonotic viruses in the next half century. Higher temperatures will drive the migration of species to areas that they have never been native to.

As temperatures rise, the range and distribution of disease-carrying organisms such as mosquitoes and ticks is also likely to expand, increasing the range and risk of transmission of diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and Lyme disease.

A 2022 study by Nature.com read, "By 2070, disease-spreading animals are likely to congregate much more in high elevation and highly populated areas like Asia."

This means that the instances of diseases like monkeypox, chikungunya, and COVID-19 are just the tip of the iceberg, and that newer diseases may likely show themselves in humans.

However, in a conversation with Nature.com, Kate Jones, who models interactions between ecosystems and human health at University College London, underlines, “Predicting the risk of viral jumps from mammals into humans is more tricky, as these spillovers take place in a complex ecological and human socio-economic environment."

In India, this situation is made much worse because of extreme air pollution. India's air quality can exacerbate respiratory illnesses like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), adding more to the country's disease burden.

Additionally, extreme weather events such as floods and droughts caused by climate change also disrupt water and sanitation systems, leading to increased outbreaks of waterborne diseases like cholera and leptospirosis.

Unfortunately, even if we limit temperature rise to under 2°C, disease spread is set to rise. The only way to tackle this is through increased species-monitoring and surveillance. This could help identify new diseases before they reach crisis levels.

However, even this is easier said than done because of disease carriers like bats, rats, and other rodents, which are called hyper reservoirs as they can carry a range of diseases and spread very far with little detection.