Get ready for extreme weather, warns UN report

Warns countries about risks from these climate events. Chetan Chauhan reports. Impact India

Updated on: Nov 20, 2011, 02:49:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A United Nations body has warned of increase in extreme heat waves, drought and intensity of drought because of climate change and had asked countries to invest more to adapt to new spree of global warming linked disasters.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) headed by RK Pachauri on Saturday said extreme weather events had increased since 1950, particularly daily temperature extreme and heat waves.

"It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation will increase and intensity of cyclones would be more," the report on climate mitigation released a week before start of global climate talks at Durban said.

India has already witnessed some of these extreme events in recent past.

Dr B Ventateswarlu, Director of Hyderabad based Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture said 14 districts in Bihar was hit by severe drought this year and another 15 by extensive monsoon flooding.

“We are witnessing unusual weather events,” he said, recalling flash flood in Andhra Pradesh in 2008. The region was historically known for drought and the local administration was never trained to cope with floods, he said.

The IPCC report said frequency of such weather events will increase in future with global carbon emissions on rise. “Heat wave will increase in length, frequency and intensity over most land areas,” the report said.

Another area of concern highlighted was more intense cyclone in most ocean basins even though the number of tropical cyclones will not increase. The report cited recent cyclone in Bangladesh to state that such events hit the poorest of the poor most not having capacity to cope with such disasters.

Over 95% of deaths because of natural disasters in the past 50 years have taken place in the developing world, where disaster adaptation measures are extremely weak. The finding would come handy to climate negotiators from developing countries such as India which had been seeking funding from rich nations for adaptation.

“Actions ranging from incremental improvements in governance and technology to more transformational changes are essential for reducing risk from climate extremes,” the report said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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