Climate Change to Cost India 24.7% of its GDP

Climate change under a high-end emissions scenario could lead to a 16.9 per cent loss in GDP by 2070 across the Asia and Pacific region, with India projected to suffer a 24.7 per cent GDP loss, according to a new report. Rising sea levels and decreasing labour productivity would drive the most significant losses, with lower-income and fragile economies being hit the hardest, it said. The new research, presented in the inaugural issue of ADB's "Asia-Pacific Climate Report", details a series of damaging impacts threatening the region.

It says that if the climate crisis continues to accelerate, up to 300 million people in the region could be at risk from coastal inundation, and trillions of dollars' worth of coastal assets could face annual damage by 2070.

"Climate change has supercharged the devastation from tropical storms, heat waves, and floods in the region, contributing to unprecedented economic challenges and human suffering," said ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa.

Urgent, well-coordinated climate action addressing these impacts is necessary before it is too late, he said.

This climate report provides insights into financing urgent adaptation needs and offers promising policy recommendations to governments in our developing member countries on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest cost, he added.

"By 2070, climate change under a high-end emissions scenario could cause a total loss of 16.9 per cent of GDP across the Asia and Pacific region. Most of the region would face more than 20 percent loss.

"Among the assessed countries and subregions, these losses are concentrated in Bangladesh (30.5 percent), Viet Nam (per cent), Indonesia (per cent), India (24.7 percent), 'the rest of Southeast Asia' (23.4 per cent), higher-income Southeast Asia (22 per cent), Pakistan (21.1 per cent), the Pacific (18.6 per cent), and the Philippines (18.1 per cent)," the report said.

It said that developing Asia has accounted for most of the increase in global GHG emissions since 2000. While advanced economies were major GHG emitters throughout the 20th century, emissions from developing Asia have risen more rapidly than those from any other region in the first two decades of the 21st century.