Can India ride out an Irma?

Coastal cities must have viable blueprints to tackle such storms

The battering Hurricane Irma has been giving to the US, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Martin, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos, The Bahamas and Cuba should be a wake-up call for India. This is because the country has too much to lose if an Irma-type storm hits the 7,517 km-long densely populated coastline. Along with the human cost of such a catastrophe (remember the cyclones in Odisha, cyclone Hudhud and the tsunami?), the coastline also houses a web of infrastructure, including transport and freight networks, road and rail corridors, industrial zones and parks, maritime and port facilities, petroleum industries and refineries. Then there are new projects such as the Sagarmala Programme. Under the programme, there will be an investment of ₹8 lakh-crore in 415 projects, which includes several ports. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also extreme weather events would hit coastal life and property even harder when their impacts get combined with the sea level rise that climate change is causing.

To save lives and infrastructure, Indian cities have to build resilience so that they can withstand such natural shocks, which, as several studies have pointed out, are expected to increase, thanks to frequent and intense heavy precipitation over most regions. According to Teri, the main challenges for incorporating climate resilience into coastal infrastructure starts with the non-availability of fine-resolution data such as sea level measurement and variation in precipitation. Such location-specific information can help planners and administrators to build in climate resilience.

Planning for climate resilience would need to start from the time of locating the infrastructure facilities. For instance, it would mean ensuring water supply channels have back-ups for extreme weather events. Critically, building climate resilience also requires buy-in from the political class. But unfortunately very few politicians are losing their sleep over the challenge of climate-protecting their constituents.