India was ‘poorly prepared’ to deal with ‘climate reality’, due to which it was more vulnerable to extreme natural disasters, according to the World Risk Index (WRI) 2020. Among continents, Oceania is at the highest risk, followed by Africa and the Americas. WRI has been developed in cooperation with the United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNUEHS) and calculated by the International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV).
The World Risk Index (WRI) 2020 revealed that India is ‘poorly prepared’ to deal with ‘climate reality and it is prone to face. Qatar had the lowest risk (0.31) according to the global index. India ranked 89th among 181 countries on the WRI 2020. The country was fourth-most-at- risk in south Asia on the index, after Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives fared better than India in their abilities to cope with extreme disasters, the report said. India and other South Asian nations did improve their ranking marginally in the World Risk Index during a year. Bhutan improved its ranking the most, followed by Pakistan.
India has also slipped on strengthening adaptive capacities which are concerning as it highlights the inability of systems, institutions, and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences. All South Asian countries have slipped on their ability to adapt to the reality of climate emergency. Hence, all South Asian countries fared poorly in the 2020 index (as compared to 2019) on strengthening their abilities to prepare and adapt to extreme events.
The index showed that Oceania was the continent most at risk, followed by Africa and the Americas. Small island states, especially in the South Pacific and the Caribbean, were disproportionately represented among high-risk countries, due to their high exposure to extreme natural events. These also included countries at risk from the rise in sea level as a result of global warming. The small island states had limited financial resources and had made small contributions to climate change, but were affected the most by its consequences. Hence, merely providing financial resources for adaptation to climate change was not sufficient. They needed to be compensated for the climate damage and losses already incurred.
Africa has been identified as a hotspot of vulnerability. More than two-thirds of the most vulnerable countries in the world are located on the continent. The size of semiarid regions in Africa is expected to increase, with over half of Africa’s land area vulnerable to desertification. Large areas of Africa are marginalized and already under significant financial stress. The Central African Republic is the most vulnerable country, followed by Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Guinea-Bissau.
The WRI is calculated on a country-by-country basis, through the multiplication of exposure and vulnerability. The WRI, released annually since 2011, indicates which countries are in the greatest need to strengthen measures for coping with and adapting to extreme natural events.
About the World Risk Index:
The World Risk Index is a statistical model for the assessment of the global risk of disasters such as earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts and sea-level rise. The WRI is part of the World Risk Report 2020 released by the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and Bundnis Entwicklung Hilft, in cooperation with the University of Stuttgart in Germany.
