Climate Change and Disaster Management
The physical link
Greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases - trap outgoing long-wave radiation, and concentrations have risen sharply since industrialisation. IPCC assessments link this to warming, a shifting monsoon, glacier retreat, sea-level rise and more frequent extremes. Climate change rarely creates wholly new hazards; it intensifies existing ones and shifts their geography, and India's profile of floods, cyclones, heat, drought and landslides is exactly the sensitive set.
Key frameworks
- UNFCCC (1992) and the Paris Agreement (2015): hold warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue 1.5; each country submits an NDC. India's updated commitments include cutting emissions intensity of GDP by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030 and reaching about 50% non-fossil installed electric capacity, with net zero by 2070.
- NAPCC 2008 - eight national missions, including Solar, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, Green India, Sustainable Agriculture and Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change. States prepare their own SAPCC; UP's focuses on agriculture, water, health and energy.
- Mitigation cuts emissions (solar, efficiency, forests, public transport). Adaptation adjusts to impacts (drought-resistant seeds, heat action plans, flood-resistant housing, early warning). In disaster management, mitigation often means structural measures instead - read the context.
- Heat Action Plans: Ahmedabad's 2013 plan was India's first; UP districts now issue heat-wave alerts with IMD.
Worked example
Why is a heat wave a climate-related disaster? Hazard is extreme temperature; exposure covers outdoor workers, slum residents and the elderly; vulnerability means tin roofs, no cooling and poor hydration; capacity means a heat action plan, water points, hospital readiness and alert dissemination. Adaptation strengthens the last term; mitigation does nothing for this year's heat wave.
Traps
Confusing adaptation with mitigation; treating climate change as only a future problem; claiming the Paris Agreement sets binding emission quotas per country; forgetting GLOFs, such as Chamoli in 2021, as a climate-linked Himalayan hazard.