Climate change forced foreign policy U-turn in India

Climate change is not only responsible for the unprecedented heat wave in 2022 in India but actually forced a U-turn in India’s declared foreign policy of supplying wheat to countries where such supply was impacted due to the Ukraine war; pointed out a just released report being prepared by nearly 30 global scientists from 10 countries.

“The 2022 heatwave is estimated to have led to at least 90 deaths across India and Pakistan … forest fires in India. The heat reduced India’s wheat crop yields, causing the government to reverse an earlier plan to supplement the global wheat supply that has been impacted by the war in Ukraine” says the report.

Around mid-April, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India had “enough food” for its 1.4 billion people and was ready to send food to the rest of the world in the aftermath of soaring food prices due to the war in Ukraine. India, globally the second-largest producer of wheat globally, exported 8.2 million tonnes during 2021- 22 , a record; and the government claimed India would be able to export anywhere between 10 and 15 million tonnes in the current fiscal year.

However unusual heat during this year’s summer, particularly an unprecedented early heatwave, had severely affected the wheat production in the country and forced a U-turn in India’s policy as it banned import of wheat on May 13; drawing a lot of flak from the international community and losing face.

“Apart from underlining the increasing impact of climate change, the development also underscores how our political leadership still remains unconnected with the climate reality on ground. We had a record temperature breaking March that affected cultivation, but clearly PM had no clue when he announced in mid-April that India was ready to send food across the world” pointed out a climate expert to The Plurals.

“Such types of crop failures are only going to increase” warned an expert linked to the World Food Programme.

The study, carried out by ‘world weather attribution network’ that conducted a rapid analysis of the link between climate change and the heatwave, was based on the observations from 20 models; and found that “the probability of an event such as that in 2022 has increased by a factor of about 30 … because of climate change” that has been triggered by a 1.2 degree Celsius average temperature rise over global benchmark which is set at 1900.

“Heatwaves are the deadliest extreme weather events … At the same time they are the type of extremes most strongly increasing in a warming world” said Friederike Otto from Imperial College, London; one of the major contributors in the study.

“With future global warming, heat waves like this will become even more common and hotter” stated the report predicting that “such a heat wave would become an additional factor of 2-20 more likely and 0.5-1.5C hotter compared to 2022” in case of a 2 degree C rise; a most likely scenario as envisaged by most climate scientists. The report has put on record that the predicted results are “likely (to be) conservative” indicating that the actual outcomes may turn out to be harsher.

“High temperatures are common in India and Pakistan but what made this unusual was that it started so early and lasted so long. We know this will happen more often as temperatures rise and we need to be better prepared for it,” said Professor Krishna Achuta Rao from Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi; one of the authors of the report to The Plurals.

“Thousands of people in this region, who, to begin with, contributed very little to global warming, are now bearing the brunt of it and will continue to do so if emissions are not significantly cut globally,” added Arpita Mondal, another author and a professor of civil engineering, and Climate Studies in IIT Bombay.

The report pointed out that the early heat wave this year was accompanied by much below average rainfall and humidity and thus constituted a dry heat wave mainly affecting the people who have to go outside to earn a daily wage, and also lack access to consistent electricity and cooling at home, which limits their options to cope under prolonged stress of heat.

“Rising temperatures from more intense and frequent heat waves will render coping mechanisms inadequate as conditions in some regions meet and exceed limits to human survivability. Mitigating further warming is essential to avoid loss of life and livelihood” said the scientists who opined that “adaptation to extreme heat can be effective at reducing mortality”.