India is among the top 10 most climate-impacted countries in the world, a global report released in Belem on Tuesday evening (Brazil time; early morning Wednesday Indian time) confirmed, pointing out how heatwaves, storms, floods and other extreme weather events have hit many countries hard in recent years, including India.
The Climate Risk Index, 2026, by Germanwatch shows that Dominica, Myanmar and Honduras are the top three countries affected by extreme weather over the past 30 years. It also shows that while almost all countries listed on the top are in the global south, five European countries and the US also appear among the top 30, indicating the rapidly spreading pan-global impact of climate change.
Forty per cent global pollution at risk
The report, compiled based on data from the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) on extreme weather events, and socioeconomic data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, says that over 830,000 fatalities occurred due to climate triggered events damage over last three decades and USD 4.5 trillion was lost.
The report shows that around 40 per cent of all people worldwide, over three billion, currently live in the 11 countries that have been most severely affected by climate change-induced extreme weather events over the past 30 years. India, tagged the ninth most globally impacted country, has a population of nearly 1.4 billion, while China, with the eleventh ranking, also has a similar population.
Libya is fourth on the list followed by Haiti while the Philippines, just struck by torrid typhoons Kalmaegi and Fung-wong, is placed at the seventh position.
Developed countries are also suffering
France occupied the overall twelfth position, highest among the industrialised countries, followed by Italy at sixteenth, while the US, currently in climate denial mode officially articulated by Donald Trump, got the eighteenth most impacted billing.
“In total, the index records over 9,700 extreme weather events between 1995 and 2024, with more than 830,000 fatalities and over USD 4.5 trillion in direct damage, adjusted for inflation. Heatwaves and storms pose the greatest threat to human life when it comes to extreme weather events,” said Laura Schäfer, one of the report’s authors, to The Plurals, which has a copy of the report.
“Storms also caused by far the greatest monetary damage, while floods were responsible for the greatest number of people affected by extreme weather,” she further said.
Countries like India do not get recovery time
“Countries such as India, Haiti, Philippines face tremendous challenges as they are hit by floods, heatwaves, or storms so regularly that entire regions can hardly recover from the impacts until the next event hits,” points out Vera Künzel, co-author of the index. The expert pointed out that the result underlines the importance of more funding to address loss and damage catered by climatic challenges.
Incidentally on Monday, the first day of global climate summit in Belem, calls rolled out for applying for ‘loss and damage UN fund’; a first of its kind and hailed as ‘historical’ by many, though activists frowned on the paltry 250 million USD being in the kitty of the fund as announced.
Experts point out that India has been consistently within the top ladder of climatic impacts as the earlier index of Germanwatch, released in 2020, showed India suffered the maximum number of deaths — 2,081 — from climate-triggered extreme weather events in 2018. India was also second in terms of economic losses in 2018.
“The latest report underlined the huge impact on India in terms of climate impacts and calls for policy changes not only at global level but also at national level to ensure that the vulnerable population can counter such impacts more strongly in future,” observed an Indian expert at Belem.