Climate change, disasters and security, issues, concerns and implications for India

Climate change and disasters are fast emerging as the most defining challenges of the 21st century as global risks with impacts far beyond just the environment and implications on national security and development. The paper examines the climate change-disaster-security nexus in context of India, the future projections of the IPCC and other regional assessments, along with the disaster profile of the country and the trend of rising disasters. For India, tackling the challenge of climate change and increasing in disaster risks posits particular significance, presently poised as she is in an upward development trajectory. Valuable time and resources would be consumed in handling the increasing risks, which would impinge on its development, unless appropriate mitigation measures and mechanisms are not put in place now, and policies redefined to address the challenge. An analysis of the impact of climate change on the risk of natural hazards and its implications for national security is put forth with proposed preparedness strategies and emergent policy imperatives. A range of options and strategies to deal with disaster risk reduction and climate risk reduction are viewed from a ‘risk management’ approach. Ensuring that development planning processes integrate climate risks as well as disaster risks will require ‘risk identification’, i.e. bringing together and effectively disseminating information on vulnerability and hazards. Translating the macro level options into courses of action at the micro local level poses a complex challenge and will require a range of risk reduction and risk spreading options micro-scoped to the regional/local context.