BHUBANESWAR: As India comes to terms with the devastation of the floods and landslides triggered by record-shattering precipitation, it is time to count the losses. Though, the unprecedented fury of extreme weather events is not new. It is not going to be the last one either.
The immense cost climate change has begun to extract can only be gauged but not estimated in real terms given its far-reaching socio-economic impact. Preliminary estimates put the damage in Himachal Pradesh due to landslides and falshfloods around Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 crore. Can the economic cost of extreme weather events truly be quantified?
A study carried out by the Delhi-based National Institute of Disaster Management suggests the economic damages inflicted on due to floods and heavy rains in the last 65 years—between 1953 and 2018—is approximately Rs 4 lakh crore.
According to the State of the Climate in Asia 2021 report, published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), floods in 2021 inflicted economic losses to the tune of $3.2 billion, which is approximately Rs 26,268 crore on India, second only to China, among Asian nations.
Last year’s floods that impacted 88 lakh in Assam reportedly left a trail of damage estimated at about Rs 10,000 crore in the North Eastern state, while the Post Disaster Needs Assessment conducted by United Nations in Kerala puts the figure at Rs 31,000 crore after the devastating floods in 2018.
A recent report of the Reserve Bank of India, which assessed the implication of climate change on the macro-economic scenario, estimated the country lost a staggering $69 billion due to climate related events in 2019 alone. If compared with the loss of $79.5 billion suffered during 1998-2017 period, it is a sharp jump and implies the cost extracted by global warming.