Climate Change
Climate Change is now widely accepted as a bitter reality and globally the Governments, Researchers and people in general are making serious efforts to find effective solutions to handle it in the near future. Information collected from different sources indicates a very challenging time for India in future. We are generating awareness among the stakeholders, who are still not well familiar with this issue and its future implications.
Climate Change: A comprehensive discourse
Satkarma Mission is developing a Global network of individuals and organizations, who can work together on the crucial and comprehensive issue of “Climate change” from a variety of perspectives to save the humanity from its farseeing adverse consequences. We aim to analyze different issues hidden in this discourse and the correlations between the climate change and the larger issues of sustainable development and ecological justice in different ecosystems.
We wish to be an instrument for highlighting climate change and communicate with Governments, corporate and affected communities to ensure a more equitable climate response from all the stakeholders. We wish to make Climate a shared responsibility of all, irrespective one’s of socio-economic, political and geographical condition.
Our Agenda
- Lowering carbon emissions
We are promoting life styles based on ancient Indian wisdom to implement feasible, effective and equitable climate solutions that can reduce carbon footprint of the human society as a whole. We create awareness among the people to switch over to those practices and livelihood activities which foster sustainable development and discourage ecologically destructive development processes evolved in the past on the false assumption of infinite resources.
- Population control
The unexpected growth of population in India is often termed as ‘Population explosion’ and the Government is very seriously concerned about its serious implications. Due to socio-economic and cultural reasons, the population of India is still increasing at a alarming rate and in future it is likely to pose a serious threat to natural resources.
Any efforts made for public welfare are nullified due to proportionate increase in the population and it results in widespread poverty, hunger, poor healthcare, malnutrition and increasing struggle for the basics required to sustain life.
We are spreading the message of population control among the masses and making them aware of the consequences of over population.
- Making Green mindsets
- Promoting a life style leading to low carbon emissions by saving electricity, water, paper and food material at individual/household/community levels.
- Making consumers aware of Environmental cost of product/services along with the economic cost
- Promoting Nature as a living entity (Ecosytem) and not simply a non-living resource for our endless needs
- Promoting principles of peaceful co-existence of humans with other animal and plant species.
Our Specific Goals for reducing carbon emissions
- Demand for Cycle treks all over India and making bicycle use a dignified brand ambassador of environmental friendly behavior.
- Demand for efficiency in Public transportation to reduce the unprecedented growth in the number of private cars /vehicles in country.
- Putting an emission tag on each tourism activity along with possible ways of neutralizing the impacts
- Capacity building for Carbon foot prints calculating among large, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) like Factories, Hotels, Tour-operators, Restaurants Cruise liners etc
- Promotion of Nature based tourism activities (low emission activities)
- Conveying the ecological costs of luxury to different consumer segments
Climate Change scenario in India
Data and information from different formal and informal resources indicates Climate Change as a serious threat for India in future.
India faces some of the highest disaster risk levels in the world and according to the 2019 Inform Risk Index, it ranked 29 out of 191 countries. India has very high exposure to flooding, including, riverine, flash, and coastal, as well as high exposure to tropical cyclones and their associated hazards and drought. Disaster risk in India is also driven by its social vulnerability.India’s vulnerability ranking (44 out of 191) is driven by its high levels of socioeconomic deprivation and uneven distribution of healthcare and resources in general.
Potential Impacts of Climate Change on the country
Economic impacts
India has the world’s highest social cost of carbon. The Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research has reported that, if the predictions relating to global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change come to fruition, climate-related factors could cause India’s GDP to decline by up to 9%; contributing to this would be shifting growing seasons for major crops such as rice, production of which could fall by 40%.
Impacts on Agriculture
In India a large population depends on agriculture and Climate Change here is likely to have a disproportionate impact on the more than 400 million that make up India’s poor. This is because so many depend on natural resources for their food, shelter and income. More than 56% of people in India work in agriculture, while many others earn their living in coastal areas.
Health impacts
Air pollution, which reflects sunlight, and irrigation, which cools the air by evaporation, has counteracted climate change since 1970. These two factors do however increase the impact of heat waves, as both lead to increased mortality.
Heat waves
‘Heat waves’ frequency and power are increasing in India because of climate change. In 2019, the temperature reached 50.6 degrees Celsius, 36 people were killed. The high temperatures are expected to impact 23 states in 2019, up from nine in 2015 and 19 in 2018. The number of heat wave days has increased, not just day temperature, night temperatures increased also. 2018 was the country’s sixth hottest year on record, and 11 of its 15 warmest years have occurred since 2004. The capital New Delhi broke its all-time record with a high of 48 degrees Celsius.
In India, exposure to heat waves is said to increase by 8 times between 2021 and 2050, and by 300% by the end of this century. The number of Indians exposed to heat waves increased by 200% from 2010 to 2016. Heat waves also affect farm labour productivity. The heat waves affect central and northwestern India the most, and the eastern coast and Telangana have also been affected. In 2015, the latter places witnessed at least 2500 deaths. In 2016, for the first time in history, Kerala reported a heat wave. The government is being advised by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in predicting and mitigating heat waves. The government of Andhra Pradesh, for instance, is creating a Heat Wave Action Plan.
The death toll from India’s heat waves has decreased in the last four years. More than 2,000 people died in 2015, 375 in 2017 and 20 in 2018. “Officials say this is because the government has made an effort to reduce the death toll by encouraging residents to reduce or alter the time spent working on hot days and by providing free drinking water to hard-hit populations”. It also used water to cool streets and forced police to guard water tankers in Madhya Pradesh state after fights over supply turned deadly.
