NEW DELHI: India faced significant economic loss due to flood, drought and heatwave-related disasters in 2022. A new report published by World Meteorological Organisation said India lost USD 4.2 billion due to disasters relating to floods followed by drought and heatwaves. The other Asian countries that faced significant losses were Pakistan and China. Much of the cost was attributable to agricultural losses.
According to the report ‘The State of Climate in Asia 2022’, India’s lower course of the Ganges and Brahmaputra basins had one of the region’s largest precipitation deficits, triggering drought-like conditions. These basins support millions of people’s livelihoods through agrarian activities in India as well as Bangladesh.
However, in the meantime, India’s few regions received the highest daily precipitation totals in central India, the Western Ghats (India), and Khasi hills. The heavy rainfall lasting from May to September triggered multiple landslides and river overflows and floods, resulting in casualties and damage. Cumulatively, this flooding caused over 2000 deaths and affected 1.3 million people, and this disaster event caused the highest number of casualties of any disaster event in India in 2022.
After floods, lightning is another major cause of death in India. In 2022, thunderstorms and lightning claimed around 1200 lives in different parts of the country. On 19–20 May, more than 34 people were killed in lightning strikes in Bihar. The report states that the mean temperature over Asia for 2022 has registered a second-record increase of 0.72 °C. It was above the 1991–2020 average. The 1991–2020 average was itself 1.68 °C, which was above the WMO 1961–1990 reference period for climate change. Furthermore, both Asian parts of the northwest Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean are warming at a mean rate comparable to the global rate, which is estimated at 0.64 W/m2.
According to the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), in 2022, 81 natural hazard events were reported in Asia; of these, over 83% were flood and storm events. These events led to over 5000 fatalities, 90% of which were associated with flooding. Overall, natural hazard events directly impacted more than 50 million people and resulted in over US$ 36 billion in damages.
The report underlined that the major natural disasters of 2022 impacted areas in Asia across the development spectrum, from floods in India and Pakistan to drought in China to heatwaves in India, Japan and Pakistan.