India is increasingly aware of the numerous site-specific natural hazards it faces, each with a rapidly evolving risk landscape. These risks are a combination of weather events, the vulnerability of local populations and their exposure. Risks are best managed and mitigated through well-planned measures. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) deserves the praise it receives for responding to disasters and helping to reduce loss of life and damage. But it also faces many knowledge gaps and obstacles in improving its operations to meet India’s weather resilience and climate resilience needs.
Never stop surprising
Most regions in India have now learned to expect extreme weather events such as heat waves, forest fires, heavy rains, landslides, droughts and cyclones at any time of the year. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is trying to keep pace by improving its forecasts for all weather hazards, although these are usually not as local (in scale) as would be required for disaster response planning. Skills can always be improved.
Academic institutions and government research organizations play an important role in advancing process and forecast understanding and improving forecasts. They also continue to develop and implement new approaches to downscale coarse-resolution global forecasts for specific sectors to hyperlocal scales.
Climate change is manifesting itself locally in cooler and warmer temperatures in north-central and peninsular India. But that does not mean that we are spared from heat waves. Likewise, extreme rainfall is no longer limited to the monsoon season from June to September, but also in the pre- and post-monsoon seasons. As a result, landslides are becoming more frequent on weakly supported land. Forest fires are also reportedly increasing.
Exacerbated by extreme weather
Vulnerability is not something entirely natural.
As India’s population and economy grows, people are moving to less secure areas and setting up informal dwellings on unstable slopes and flood-prone areas. The more exotic of these places are attracting more tourists, and the government is building more infrastructure there and encouraging other economic activities, such as replacing forest land with cash crops and plantations.
The recent landslides in Wayanad have clearly highlighted this dangerous mix of factors.
In summary, vulnerability is a combination of poverty and high population density with poor infrastructure in some places and wealth and uncertain development in others. Insurance coverage and/or policies could also pose a moral hazard by inducing people to increase their exposure to climate risks.
Ineffective translation
India continues to invest heavily in climate research, forecasting and services. Climate services transform forecasts into decision support for agriculture, water and energy resources, healthcare, transport and other sectors. But the use of this information is remarkably low because it is either not as location- or sector-specific as it needs to be, or because there are not enough people with the right skills to use it.
Academia and many private companies continue to try to translate the IMD’s predictions to hyperlocal scales and improve capabilities to deliver value-added products to users. Even when specific products are developed at the required sizes and skill levels, their operationalization or their timely and routine deployment remains a major hurdle. Two examples illustrate this problem.
(i) Irrigation instructions: Weather forecasts are often translated into agricultural information to guide irrigation from days 1 to 5 and water allocation for up to 14 days. Experts combine farmer inputs on their irrigation practices with data on soil properties, crop species, water needs and crop stress so that rainfall forecasts can support decisions on whether there is enough water for irrigation and how to schedule it.
The author was involved in one such decision support tool developed for grape growers in Nashik district.
The joint development of this solution with farmers showed that up to 30% water savings can be achieved in both the Kharif and Rabi seasons without any loss of yield.
Now, large-scale operationalization is needed: farmers need to use this tool to document the usefulness and applicability of irrigation recommendations over several years so that the tool can be improved. This is planned in the form of an app through which farmers can access data and provide continuous feedback to researchers. Researchers can use this feedback to update the tool for other regions and other crops.
However, to involve many farmers and develop the app, the involvement of local governments, non-governmental organizations and farmers’ organizations or cooperatives is required. This can be seen as a task for extension agencies, which – if they exist – could implement the research results in daily, weekly and seasonal farming.
But such bodies do not exist, and we are not training staff to man them. We also lack the funding structures to take programs from research to implementation. At the same time, there is an unmet need to provide poorer farmers with the data on soil moisture and crop yields they need to plan irrigation. Without these systems and skills, any plan to double farmers’ incomes or provide them with a minimum income will be impossible.
(ii) Urban flood forecasts: We need to reduce heavy rainfall forecasts at street level in cities to prevent flooding. Currently, municipalities achieve this with inputs from municipal sensors and data from their weather stations.
However, the ideal situation is this: flood managers must evaluate forecasts over multiple seasons to ensure that a phased forecast is feasible and then plan the allocation and deployment of drainage pumps, traffic control units, bus/train routes, school closures, etc.
In this example, flood managers must be trusted employees of a government, non-governmental organization, or private company that monitors the forecasts and their systematic biases, as well as human actions that worsen the flooding.
Again, neither the academic structure nor the structure of city administrations make it possible to fully transfer scaled-down forecasts to urban flood management and flood risk mitigation.
From research to operation
Climate science is currently too siloed to deliver results for work within a reasonable timeframe. Previously, research papers and PhDs were the goal, but now it has to meet people’s needs by bringing science to society. Governments and disaster management agencies depend on them. We clearly need sector-specific advisory bodies as described above to bridge the gap between research and administration. These bodies will serve as a link to jointly develop effective solutions to weatherize India.
Indeed, weather preparedness and climate resilience must be hyperlocal, as the nation will only be as prepared and resilient as its weakest link. This requires sustained funding of the systems needed at every location and in every sector, from research to operations.
We also need to get serious about capacity building, that is, training sector-specific advisers who can communicate in local languages and manage the impact of cultural peculiarities on disaster management and risk reduction.
Even if this task seems arduous, do not forget that it is also necessary: to ensure India’s sustainable development and to provide safety and security to all people, including from the effects of climate change.
Raghu Murtugudde is a Professor at IIT Bombay and Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland.
