1.2 bn Indians will live in places as hot as Sahara if emissions nor curbed

Nagpur: More than 1.2 billion people in India would live in places as hot as the Sahara within 50 years if the greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. Overall, home to one-third of the world’s population will become as hot as the desert.
This was brought to the fore in the latest scientific research ‘Future of the Human Climate Niche’ by scientists from China, USA and Europe and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study highlights how one-third of the population will live under “near-unlivable” heat, with India being one of the countries most at risk. “Rising mortality, which is an impact of heat waves on dense populations in already hot places such as India, invite further scrutiny. Follow-up work is needed to search for integrative avenues for effective adaptation, as well as defining fundamental limitations to what is possible given available resources,” the study states.
Previously, the report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had warned that the country could face an annual threat of deadly heatwaves, like the one in 2015 that killed at least 2,500 people.
Apart from India, Nigeria is also at risk where 485 million people would live in those conditions. Pakistan, Indonesia and Sudan would each see more than 100 million people affected. “Temperatures are projected to increase rapidly as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions. Under a scenario in which emissions continue to increase unabated, temperature experienced by the average person will have risen 7.5°C by 2070,” the study states.
Researchers draw a parallel between the findings and the current crisis. “The coronavirus has changed the world in ways that were hard to imagine a few months ago and our results show how climate change could do something similar. Change would unfold less rapidly, but unlike with the pandemic, there would be no relief to look forward to: large areas of the planet would heat to barely survivable levels and they wouldn’t cool down again,” said Prof Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University, who coordinated the research with his Chinese colleague Xu Chi, of Nanjing University.
Researchers further highlighted that rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could halve the number of people exposed to such conditions. “The good news is that these impacts can be greatly reduced if humanity succeeds in curbing global warming,” says study co-author Tim Lenton, climate specialist and director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter. “Our computations show each degree warming above present levels corresponds to roughly one billion people falling outside of the climate niche. It is important we can now express the benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in something more human than just monetary terms,” he added.
What study says:
- More than 1.2 billion people in India would live in places as hot as the Sahara within 50 years if greenhouse gases not reduced
- One-third of the world’s population will be in places as hot as the desert
- Pakistan, Indonesia and Sudan would each see more than 100 million people affected
- Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could halve the number of people exposed to such conditions