Extreme Weather Events Have Cost India $180Bn Since 1993, Report On Climate Change Says
According to the Climate Risk Index by environmental NGO Germanwatch, nearly 800,000 people died worldwide between 1993 & 2022 due to more than 9,400 extreme weather events.
Climate Change: India is among the 10 countries most affected by extreme weather events between 1993 and 2022, says a new report that seeks to highlight the perils of insufficient mitigation and adaptation measures to tackle climate change and its impacts. According to the Climate Risk Index 2025, released on Wednesday by the Bonn-based environmental NGO Germanwatch, nearly 800,000 people died worldwide in the 30-year period due to more than 9,400 extreme weather events. The disasters, it adds, caused $4.2 trillion in damage.
The countries in the top 10 most affected nations are Dominica, China, Honduras, Myanmar, Italy, India, Greece, Spain, Vanuatu and the Philippines.
India, the report notes, “affected by floods, heatwaves, and cyclones… experienced devastating floods in 1993, 1998, and 2013, along with severe heatwaves in 2002, 2003, and 2015”. “The country faced more than 400 extreme events, causing $180 billion in losses,” it adds.
While it’s not possible to relate particular extreme weather events to climate change, the report is based on the assessment and general consensus that global warming has aggravated the frequency and intensity of natural disasters such as floods and heatwaves.
“The number and strength of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms, and heatwaves are increasing and gradually becoming the ‘new normal’ in some regions of the world,” a press note accompanying the index says.
‘Unpredictable Phase Of Climate Crisis’
Three of the top 10 most-affected countries — Italy, Greece and Spain — are part of Europe, and the finding has been highlighted to note that high-income countries aren’t immune to the impact of climate change.
“Seven of the 10 most affected countries in 2022 belonged to the high-income country group. This clearly indicates that, while the coping capacities of high-income countries significantly exceed those of lower-income countries, higher-income countries should also increase their climate risk management,” the index states.
The report has been released days before the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC) begins in Germany. Dubbed the “world’s most important informal forum for discussing questions of security policy”, the MSC is a private event that is not hosted by the German government but still attended by high-ranking representatives of politics, business, academia and civil society from all around the world.
Laura Schaefer, Head of Division for International Climate Policy at Germanwatch, is quoted as saying in the press note that the “climate crisis is increasingly becoming a global security risk and must be addressed with bold multilateral actions”.
“Leaders at the Munich Security Conference cannot discuss security
challenges without addressing climate change. The past three decades show that countries in the Global South are particularly affected by extreme weather events,” she added. “If the data from these
countries were as comprehensive as those from many Global North countries, an even greater degree of economic and human effects might become visible.”
Schaefer said there are “increasing signs that we are entering a critical and unpredictable phase of the climate crisis, which will further aggravate conflicts, destabilise societies and negatively affect human security worldwide”.
Germanwatch, a think tank and NGO, describes itself as an organisation that advocates sustainable global development based on social equity, respect for nature, and economic justice. The Climate Risk Index has since 2006 “analysed the number of deaths, people affected, and economic damage caused by extreme weather events — in absolute figures and relative to the population or gross domestic product”.
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