Nine Indian States Among Top 50 Regions At Risk Of Damage Due To Climate Change

A new report ‘Gross Domestic Climate Risk’ published on Monday revealed that a total of nine Indian states including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Punjab are among the world’s top 50 regions at risk of damage to the built environment due to climate change hazards. Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI) has calculated the physical climate risk to the built environment in over 2,600 states and provinces around the world in 2050. The data compared these territories according to modeled projections of damage to buildings and properties from extreme weather and climate change such as flooding, forest fires, heatwave, and sea level rise. XDI also noted that entities not on the list are not ‘low risk’ and said many states and provinces facing high risk from extreme weather climate hazards are not appearing at the top of this ranking due to their lower number of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. In China which dominates the ranking, at-risk states and provinces are concentrated in the globally-connected east and south, along the floodplains and deltas of the Yangtze and Pearl rivers. In the US, the economically important states of California, Texas and Florida would be most affected.