India will lose 10% of its economy if climate change is not addressed by 2100: Study

India will lose 10% of its economy by 2100 if nothing is done to address climate change, according to a study co-authored by researchers from the University of Cambridge and published by the National Bureau of Economic Study on Monday.

The study that makes projection for the business as usual scenario and a scenario where the countries have come together to implement the Paris Agreement suggests that all countries – the rich, the poor, the hot, and the cold ones – will suffer economically by 2100 if nothing is done.

United States, which has pulled out of the Paris Agreement, will lose 10.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2100, according to the study. GDP is the monetary measure of all the final goods and services produced, which provides an economic snapshot of the country.

The study found that Canada, which some claimed will benefit from a rise in temperature, would also lose 13% of its income by 2100.

However, with Paris Agreement in place, both the countries would lose only 2% of the GDP.

Under the business as usual scenario, Japan and New Zealand will lose 105 of their income, Switzerland will lose 12%, Russia 9%, and UK 4% of its GDP. The global loss would amount to 7% if nothing is done, the research shows.

The researchers believe it is not the absolute temperature recorded in a country, but the deviation from the historical norm that will determine the impact of climate change on the economy.

“Whether cold snaps or heat waves, droughts, floods or natural disasters; all deviations of climate conditions from their historical norms have adverse economic effects. Without mitigation and adaptation policies, many countries are likely to experience sustained temperature increases relative to historical norms and suffer major income losses as a result. This holds for both rich and poor countries as well as hot and cold regions,” said Dr Kamiar Mohaddes, a co-author of the study from Cambridge’s Faculty of Economics in a release.

A study published earlier this year suggested that global warming had increased the inequalities between countries, with the rich, colder countries benefitting from the rising temperatures and the tropical, poorer countries losing out. The experts, however, suggested that this was a very simplistic view of the temperature change that did not account for technological advancements.

“A study retrospectively attributing economic losses to climate change is flawed because it is recently that people have actually started attributing extreme weather events to climate change. The projection of the future, however, seems more plausible,” said Dr Leena Srivastava, vice chancellor TERI School of Advanced Studies.

First Published: Aug 19, 2019 23:44 IST