On the planet, nearly 1 in 5 human beings is Indian. With nearly 1.43 billion inhabitants, the country should double China in mid-2023, according to UN projections, and become the most populous country in the world. Behind this demographic growth there is also an ecological issue. Because despite its ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2070, the South Asian giant occupies the third place of the world’s biggest polluters. Although the country is committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 35% in 2030, its efforts in terms of energy transition remain severely limited, as evidenced by its dependence on fossil fuels, which generates air pollution today considered dangerous.
Global warming also poses enormous concerns about aridity: extreme temperatures, increasingly capricious monsoons… The challenges promise to be colossal. Interview with Christophe Jaffrelot, French political scientist specializing in the Indian subcontinent, and journalist Bénédicte Manier, author in particular of The Green Route of India. In the land of ecological and civic transitions (published by L’Echiquier, 2018).
L’Express: What consequences of global warming is India currently experiencing?
Christophe Jaffrelot : Heat waves have become recurrent and much earlier. It’s so hot in India right now that some schools have had to close. In Bombay in March, temperatures can reach 40°C… This is unprecedented in the history of meteorology!
We are now observing winter heat waves and this will promote, and already promotes, the desertification of certain areas. The monsoons, previously much more spread out over time, are now very concentrated: it rains torrentially for fifteen days. The Indians thus have more difficulty storing water, because it runs off very quickly, it does not penetrate the ground and does not return to the water tables.
In addition, with rising sea levels, some deltas are at risk of being submerged. All the deltas on the east coast are very dense areas with an average of 1,000 inhabitants per km2, in particular because rice cultivation is practiced there. But beyond that, major port cities like Bombay threaten to be swallowed up by 2050. India does not have the means to build polders in order to recover land. Some areas could therefore become uninhabitable, forcing millions of Indians to relocate.
Benedicte Manier: The decade 2011-2020 was the hottest on record in India, as in the rest of the world. During heat waves, temperatures can reach 45°C, an unbearable level. These heat waves also aggravate already existing droughts which are due to the overexploitation of groundwater for several decades. Intensive agriculture uses strong irrigation, which accounts for 80% of the water consumed in the country. It has lowered water tables to a critical level, especially in the north, such as in Punjab, the breadbasket of the country.
Water shortages have become regular. In the towns, the taps often only run for a few hours a day and, in certain months, townspeople and farmers have to be supplied by tank trucks. It is not clear how this overexploitation of water reserves could continue: in the long term, this agricultural model is certainly not viable. Especially since in the future, global warming will aggravate the lack of water, by amplifying surface evaporation. The challenge will be to maintain sufficient agricultural production for a growing population, with declining water reserves and heat waves affecting crops. Last year, for example, the early heat wave in March cut off the production of basic foodstuffs such as wheat, rice or potatoes.
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What are the main difficulties encountered by India in its adaptation to climate change?
B.M. : As elsewhere on the planet, radical changes will be needed: abandon fossil fuels to switch to renewables, adapt agriculture, preserve water resources… . Which, in this predominantly rural country, will require significant effort. But locally, there are interesting ways to adapt. In several semi-desert areas of Rajasthan and Telangana, for example, extensive rain-harvesting systems have helped to replenish water tables and regenerate soils. These areas have also been reforested and abandoned conventional agriculture for agroecological models (organic crops, permaculture and agroforestry), which consume less water.
The results are very convincing; on restored ecosystems, crops have high yields and are resistant to droughts, which secures food production. These models are also recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), because they are resilient to climate change and form carbon sinks. One of India’s states, Andhra Pradesh, has decided to switch to agroecology, training six million farmers there. But these experiences are very much in the minority. They should be systematized to enable India to feed its population in a sustainable way, while resisting the vagaries of the weather.
The lack of water in cities also leads to local initiatives. The metropolises of Delhi and Bangalore have installed rain collectors on many public buildings. Collecting rainwater is compulsory in Bangalore on large houses and in Tamil Nadu on new buildings. For its part, the city of Chennai will develop wetlands to let the rains infiltrate underground and fill the water tables, instead of running off on the asphalt and flooding the streets. But here again, these are minority achievements, which need to be multiplied.
CJ: Yes, the water issue is major. In India there is a lot of waste, the network is very poorly maintained… And we realize that the cities have become impermeable because we have artificialized the soil a lot. One of the possible adaptations would therefore be to de-artificialize the soil so as to make certain cities into sponges, “Sponge cities”, as is indeed the case in Chennai.
Is the ecological imperative taken into account?
CJ: No, there is not a very developed sensitivity to ecological issues in India. There is still no green party, environmental issues are taken into account by some parties, but not all, far from it. Most don’t even mention it in their program. The Indians end up getting used to the pollution and living with it. For example, air pollution in Delhi makes life totally impossible during the winter months. With very low visibility and closed schools, there is a kind of resignation rather than a particularly strong sensitivity to the phenomenon.
B.M. : Climate change is nevertheless raising awareness in civil society. Urban youth are aware of this. In rural villages, we also know that the climate changes, because we experience it every day. Farmers are worried about their water supply, about the effect of heat waves. They see the land drying up and the level of the wells dropping. Local authorities also seem to be paying a little more attention to the water crisis. And there is a public policy in favor of renewable energies. But ecology generally remains a secondary concern. Half of urban waste is not treated, for example.
Today, what are the means implemented by the government to reduce CO2 emissions in the country?
B.M. : India is investing in renewable energy, as the country is very sunny and has many windy coastlines. We see SMEs equipping villages with solar mini-grids, and large industrial groups building solar power plants and wind farms, on contracts awarded by the public authorities. Last year, 12.8 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity was installed. But if renewables are developing, they still only represent a small part of the energy produced: 8% for solar and wind power in 2021, and 10% for hydropower. By early 2023, India had reached 125 GW of installed renewable capacity, less than its target of 175 GW planned for 2022.
For wind power, the Center for Science and Environment (CSE) estimates that 12 GW of capacity would have to be added per year to reach the national objective of 450 GW of renewable energy installed in 2030. However, on average, only 1 .50 GW are added every year (2.2 GW in 2022), even though India already has the fourth largest installed wind capacity in the world (41.8 GW).
CJ: We can certainly notice that they invest a little more in solar energy, but without this increasing the percentage of renewable energies in the overall energy balance in a significant way, since we continue to have more than 50%, even 55% of the electricity that is produced by coal-fired plants. There is an effort, but it is far from sufficient… We can doubt the country’s ability to achieve carbon neutrality by 2070 as it has committed to.
Will India be stopped in its tracks by the scarcity of resources?
CJ: It’s a big handicap for the country’s growth, that’s obvious. The agricultural sector is not negligible: half of the Indians work in the fields, it is estimated that 40% of consumption comes from the countryside. However, if crops lose productivity and production, the economy cannot grow.
B.M. : A scarcity of water would indeed have consequences on agriculture and, beyond that, on the entire economy. India is one of the leading agricultural producers in the world and it is a monsoon economy, a monsoon-dependent economy. A good or bad rainy season conditions all irrigated agricultural production. This has a cascading influence on the country’s food self-sufficiency, on the volume of agricultural exports and imports, on the incomes of 600 million rural people, on the prices of basic foodstuffs, on part of the trade and public budgets (amount of agricultural subsidies and food aid). The availability or lack of water therefore has a direct impact on gross domestic product and economic development.
Moreover, India needs water to develop its industry. The second consumer of water in the country is indeed the industrial sector, far behind agriculture, but ahead of domestic uses. If water becomes scarce, industrial development will obviously be hampered.
One of the first impacts of global warming on humans is the displacement of populations. Should we fear a massive displacement of Indian populations by 2050?
B.M. : India is already experiencing internal displacement due to severe weather (cyclones, floods, droughts). The Indian Council of Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) counted 478 between 1970 and 2019, the vast majority occurring after 2005, due to global warming. These episodes are disastrous: torrential rains cause landslides and floods, which drown crops, livestock and homes. According to the CSE, they caused 3.9 million internal refugees in India and more than 1,370 deaths in 2020. These displacements will continue if these climatic hazards become more numerous in the future. According to the CEEW, 75% of the country’s districts are at risk of extreme events.
But India is not the only one concerned: neighboring Bangladesh has already been suffering for years from a rise in water levels which is drowning the fields and driving the inhabitants away from the coasts. Pakistan is also affected by extreme heat waves. It is therefore throughout the subcontinent that internal displacements, even temporary ones, due to bad weather could become more frequent.
