India's climate adaptation gap: Address it for the sake of growth

Let’s start early: Our economic strategy must adapt the country to climate adversity well before warming reaches 2° Celsius

- MEKALA KRISHNAN & KANMANI CHOCKALINGAM

Human societies have long found ingenious ways to cope with extreme weather; and India is no exception. The ancient Kallanai dam in southern India, for example, built to divert the Kaveri River for irrigation, sustained fertile delta farming for centuries.

The stepwells of western India—subterranean reservoirs that stored water—offered relief from extreme heat and helped local communities endure long dry seasons.

The world today spends about $190 billion a year on climate adaptation through 20 proven cost-effective measures—ranging from sea dikes to air-conditioning—to protect against heat, drought, wildfire and flooding, finds a McKinsey Global Institute research study, ‘Advancing Adaptation: Mapping Costs from Cooling to Coastal Defenses.”

Under current emissions trajectories, as the planet's warming reaches 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels by roughly 2050, the cost of maintaining today’s protection levels would be about 2.5 times current spending. Providing protection at standards typically established in developed economies would push annual adaptation costs to $1.2 trillion.

India, with its diverse climate, faces particularly high exposure. More than 80% of the country's land area is already exposed to climate hazards, affecting nearly 90% of its population. Our research estimates that the country currently spends about $13 billion a year on climate adaptation—just over 10% of what would be required today to protect all exposed people by developed-economy standards.