Hello, and welcome to this latest edition of From a Climate Correspondent, a newsletter exploring the climate crisis around the globe.
Each week we share insights on the fight against climate change from our adoptive countries – this week from India, which comes under the spotlight in a new study on environmental vulnerability just as it enters the hottest season.
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From a Climate Correspondent team - India, Jocelyn, Lou and Mat
India's retreating climate niche
No. 21 by Lou Del Bello
A woman sits at the edge of a forest eroded by human activities in the Ambagad Chowki Forest Range, in the state of Chhattisgarh. Image credit: Lou Del Bello
It's getting hot in Delhi. We are finally allowed to venture out as the lockdown eases, but the weather outside is not so tempting anymore, with temperatures in the high thirties for most of the day.
After two such scorching summers, I know what to expect, but that doesn't make the heat any easier to bear - despite having access to fans and air conditioning.
India is a naturally hot and dusty country, but is increasingly experiencing scorching and abnormally long heatwaves.
And while I am among the lucky few who can - to some extent - take measures to adapt to the harsh climate, this is not the case for the majority of Indians, who directly bear the brunt of erratic weather, failed harvests and destructive floods among other subtle, long lasting impacts.
Climate niche
Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in the UK, set out to investigate the relationship between this silent majority and the environmental conditions that allowed human civilisation to thrive for millennia. With an international team from the Netherlands, China and the US, he applied the concept of climate niche, or that narrow temperature band which each species is best adapted to.
This concept is widely used to study animals, Lenton tells me, but it has never been applied to humans before, and doing so led to some surprising findings.
The team found that for the past 5000 years humans have consistently been living in places with an average annual temperature of around 13C. Despite a rapid development that allowed us to reach almost every corner of the planet, as a species we still congregate in those temperate areas. “You would say that humans are fantastically adaptable,” Lenton says, “a few of us can live in some of the coldest places on the planet and some of the hottest places, but in extreme climates population density remains pretty low.”
India on the frontline
But these hospitable areas may be fast disappearing, leaving 3.5 billion people, of which 1.2 billion are in India, to face nearly “unlivable” heat stress.
The researchers looked at what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents as a worst case scenario, in which emissions continue to grow unabated and no mitigation policy is implemented, and found that by 2070 30% of the world’s projected population may live in places with an average temperature above 29C.
Millions of people affected by +29C average temperatures under worst case climate scenario examined in the paper Future of the Human Climate Niche, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910114117
With each degree warming above present levels, the authors say, roughly one billion people fall outside of the climate niche they need to thrive.
With a much greater number of people potentially exposed to deadly heat stress than any other country, India’s vulnerability to climate change - which Indians and long term guests like me know very well - comes under the spotlight.
But the fact that we are already experiencing, and learning to survive, some pretty extreme weather, means that “India's kind of ready,” Lenton tells me. The Indian subcontinent is like a hump of higher population density in a hot but fairly wet place. And that's encouraging, he says, because other people are eventually going to end up in the same conditions India is already adapting to.
“But then you've got to ask, what happens if you are already in hot conditions and it gets even hotter?”
What now?
My chat with Lenton leaves me wondering if we humans may well be less resilient than we imagine, a thought that in the middle of a global pandemic is both fitting and unnerving. I think of the impacts of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, and how in India (and beyond) the environment could once again be forgotten in the face of most pressing needs.
But as we focus on one immediate crisis, “this study should give us a very human reason to try to limit global warming,” Lenton says. Yes, we are still heading for 3C of warming by the end of the century. “But in the shorter term extreme events give us a taster of what's to come. We should use them as a learning experience, because they are going to become the new normal.”
India, I realise, is already working on that. Our homes have flat roofs and thick bricks to keep us cool, and diets of lentils, unleavened bread and salty lemonade keep our minerals up in the sweatiest days. Every year, more countries of the Indian subcontinent perfect their heat action plans.
India is still desperately behind in the race against climate change, but as I dream of post lockdown escapes from my flat nestled at the heart of Delhi, I take solace in its perseverance.
Must reads from the region
This week, something different: Introducing Lights On - tracking the energy and climate debate in South Asia.
This is my new weekly newsletter for climate and energy nerds! Discover why India matters to the Paris Agreement and its huge importance in decarbonising the global economy, one story at a time.
Subscribe here and share your feedback on Twitter! I am @loudelbello
Environment Vs Economy: An Approach That Exposes India To COVID-19-Like Infections - Tish Sanghera and Disha Shetty, IndiaSpend and Pulitzer Center
This ambitious data-led investigation sheds light on the way government malpractices are eating away at India’s most precious environmental resources, also increasing the risk of new zoonotic diseases emerging.
To kickstart the economy, India’s environment ministry is clearing projects in 10 minutes - Nihar Gokhale, Quartz
India is already moving away from environmental priorities to save the country from economic collapse.
Conservation biologists navigate the new normal, Sahana Ghosh, Mongabay India
A glimpse into the life of the scientists that despite the hardships brought by the coronavirus keep conservation efforts going in India.
What else I've been reading...
The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from? Shannon Osaka, Grist
Here, Grist unpacks the mystery of the invisible emissions during the great lockdown. Skies are clear, the streets are empty and global emissions have gone down by just a 5.5%. Where is the rest coming from? Entertaining and essential read to understand why putting the brakes on global pollution is not as straightforward as it seems.
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