Billions Of Lost Labour Hours, Boost In Disease Transmission: Lancet Report Raises Alarm On India's Growing Heat Toll

Latest report by Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, published Wednesday, says the world is increasingly off-track from meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

According to the report, in 2023, 'people were exposed, on average, to an unprecedented 50 more days of health-threatening heat than expected without climate change'.

Source : PTI

Many of the health threats and impacts of climate change are “exceeding all previous records”, a study by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change has warned, adding that the world is increasingly off-track from meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The impacts range from extreme climate events and increasingly suitable conditions for the spread of infectious diseases, to growing mortality among the elderly, and lost sleep and exercise on account of heat stress, says the report, published Wednesday.

In India alone, 181 billion potential labour hours were lost due to heat exposure in 2023, an increase of 50% from the 1990-1999 annual average, the report says, adding that $141 billion was the potential income loss from labour capacity reduction due to heat in 2023. India’s agriculture sector, the report notes, has been the worst hit, with its potential income loss from heat pegged at $71.9 billion in 2023.

The Lancet Countdown was established in 2015 to “monitor the health impacts and opportunities of the world’s response” to the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global temperature increase this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Supported through strategic core funding from Wellcome, a UK-based charity initiative, the “collaboration brings together over 300 multidisciplinary researchers and health professionals from around the world to take stock annually of the evolving links between health and climate change at global, regional, and national levels”.

The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown, “building on the expertise of 122 leading researchers from UN agencies and academic institutions worldwide, reveals the most concerning findings yet in the collaboration’s years of monitoring”.

The report reveals that “people in every country face record-breaking threats to health and survival from the rapidly changing climate, with 10 of 15 indicators tracking health threats reaching concerning new records”.

The authors seek urgent action, and call out “governments and companies who continue ‘fuelling the fire’ with persistent investment in fossil fuels, all-time high energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, and years of delays in adaptation that are narrowing the survival chances of people across the globe”.

“Despite some progress in adoption of renewable energy, many key indicators point to a world moving in the wrong direction, with many showing a reversal of progress in the last year of data,” it adds.

Situation World Over

The Lancet report is peppered with some alarming findings: In 2023, the report says, “people were exposed, on average, to an unprecedented 50 more days of health-threatening heat than expected without climate change, resulting in 167% more annual deaths of adults older than 65 years than in the 1990s.

A press release accompanying the report notes that this is “substantially above the 65% increase that would have been expected had temperatures not changed (i.e., accounting only for changing demographics)”. 

“This compounds existing inequities, with the number of health-threatening heat days added by climate change higher in countries with a low human development index (a measure of education, income, and life expectancy),” the statement notes. 

The hours of sleep lost due to heat exposure reached 6% above hours lost in 1986-2005, the report adds, also noting that heat exposure led to “record losses of the hours available for safe outdoor physical activity and labour”.

“Meanwhile, heat exposure resulted in a record worsening of online sentiment expressions globally,” the report notes. Discussing the latter indicator, the report observes how “extreme heat can affect human mental health outcomes across a continuum of severity, from subclinical to life-altering”. 

Findings on this count are based on “geolocalised X (formerly Twitter) posts with coincident meteorological data to estimate the effect of heat exposure on expressed sentiment.

“Over the last 10 years, on average, extreme heat events worsened sentiment by 18% more than the estimated baseline effect,” the report says, adding that these findings suggest that the annual sentiment-worsening impacts of heat have increased globally. 

Among other findings, the report says extreme drought affected 48% of global land area in 2023 — the second-highest proportion recorded. 

“The increased frequency of droughts and heatwaves has resulted in a record 151 million more people experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in 2022 than in 1986–2010,” the report says, noting that the “changing climate is making environmental conditions increasingly suitable for the transmission of deadly infectious diseases such as dengue, malaria, vibriosis, and West Nile virus-related illness in new parts of the world”. 

What Report Says About India

In 2023, the report says, individuals were exposed to a moderate or higher risk of heat stress for an average 2,400 hours per year, or the equivalent of 100 days per year, during light outdoor activities (like walking). 

“From 2014-2023, each infant and adult over age 65 was exposed to an average of 7.7 and 8.4 heatwave days per year, respectively. These are 47% and 58% increases, respectively, compared to 1990-1999,” it adds.

About the growing suitability for the transmission of many infectious diseases, the report says the “transmission potential (R0) for dengue transmitted by Aedes albopictus mosquitoes increased by 85% from 1951-1960 to 2014-2023, with an average R0 above one at 1.6 for 2014-2023”. 

“For Aedes Aegypti, in the same time period comparison, R0 has decreased only by 4%, but R0 remains high at 2.3.

The report also says, from 2014-2023, “the length of coastline with conditions suitable for the transmission of Vibrio pathogens at any one time during the year was 23% greater than in 1990-1999”. 

The Lancet Countdown noted that renewable energy use “in India has grown since 2000, supplying a record 11% of the country's electricity in 2022”. However, it points out that “71% of electricity still comes from coal, emphasising the need for a faster transition away from these harmful fuels and to clean energies”

The report also identifies India as the world’s second-highest emitter of PM2.5 “based on both consumption- and production-based accounting”.

In 2021, 1.6 million deaths in India were attributable to anthropogenic air pollution (PM₂.₅). Fossil fuels (coaland liquid gas) contributed to 38% of these deaths, the report notes, adding that $320 billion is the monetised value of the premature mortality.

“In 2022, India contributed 15.8% of the world's consumption-based PM2.5 emissions. For a production-based accounting, India contributed 16.9% of the world's PM2.5 emissions,” it says. 

The researchers say, in 2022, India had a net-negative carbon revenue, “indicating that fossil fuel subsidies were higher than carbon prices. India allocated a record net total of nearly US$58 billion in fossil fuel subsidies”.

Each year, from 2014 to 2023, an average of 42.7% of India’s land area experienced at least one month of extreme drought, nearly double what was seen from 1950 to 1960. During the same period, around 25% of India’s land faced drought for three months or more annually, almost 7 times the extent recorded between 1950 and 1960, the report says.