Climate Disaster Relief Fund: Need of the Hour
M A Baby
INDIA experienced extreme weather events on 322 out of the 366 days in 2024, surpassing the 318 days in 2023 and 314 days in 2022. Nearly 88 per cent of the previous year saw extreme weather in one or more parts of the country, up from 87 per cent in 2023 and 86 per cent in 2022. These extreme weather events have resulted in severe human and economic losses, with 3,472 fatalities in 2024, up from 3,287 in 2023 and 3,026 in 2022 – an increase of 15 per cent in three years. These figures are based on the data available with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down to Earth (DTE). According to the reports thus far this year, the situation is only escalating and if so, it surely points to a worrying trend.
In August 2025 itself, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Jammu & Kashmir have experienced unprecedented rains and floods, resulting in significant destruction, numerous fatalities, missing persons, and widespread infrastructure damage. In Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district, severe flash floods struck primarily due to cloudbursts. Catastrophic rainfall and landslides occurred in Himachal Pradesh. 40 out of 55 districts in Madhya Pradesh have received above normal rainfall this monsoon season. Nearly 25 lakh people in low-lying areas of Bihar were affected by floods in 10 districts along river Ganga. Heavy rainfall, particularly in the border districts of Amritsar, Pathankot, Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran, caused floods in Punjab. Jammu & Kashmir had their wettest monsoon spell since 1950.
Frederick Engels had explained in his Dialectics of Nature, “at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.” He went on to say, “with every day that passes we are learning to understand these laws more correctly, and getting to know both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature.”
However, our track record on conducting Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) – which is an essential pre-requisite before any major project is conceived and implemented – point to the fact that we are yet to truly understand and apply ‘these laws’. EIA is mandatory for any project, especially in environmentally fragile areas. Unfortunately, in most cases, in our country this is either violated or compromised. Additionally, no information regarding projects labelled ‘strategic’ by the union government, is disclosed to the public.
Most studies on environment and climate change also underline our lack of understanding and application of ‘these laws’. According to the Climate Risk Index (CRI) – one of the longest-running climate impact indices, being brought out since 2006 – published by Germanwatch, a non-profit advocating for sustainable development, India ranks 6th among the countries most affected by extreme weather events over the three decades from 1993 to 2023. We have experienced devastating floods in 1993, 1998, and 2013, along with severe heat waves in 2002, 2003, and 2015. Overall, more than 400 extreme events have hit India since 1993, causing $180 billion in losses and at least 80,000 fatalities. However, the effects of global warming and climate change induced by it, which often manifest as extreme weather events, are not restricted to India alone. They are now truly a global phenomenon.
As per the annual report of the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under the US Department of Commerce – 2024 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850. Earth’s temperature has risen by an average of 0.06°C per decade since 1850. However, the rate of warming since 1982 is more than three times as fast, 0.20° C per decade. 2024 was 1.18 °C warmer than the 20th century average of 13.9 °C. It was 1.35 °C warmer than the average of 13.7 °C, for the second half of the 19th century. The 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred in the past decade, 2015 to 2024. Yet, the very same United States that came up with this report, pulled out of its Paris Agreement commitments!
Under such circumstances, there is a lot of attention on India, especially since we have set ambitious climate targets, aiming for net-zero emissions by 2070 and a 50 per cent reduction in emissions intensity by 2030. However, this year’s union budget offered only a token acknowledgement of climate action. Though the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC) did receive a modest increase in its budget allocation, funding for critical sectors such as industrial decarbonisation, climate adaptation, and ecosystem conservation remained grossly inadequate.
The National Coastal Mission funding was reduced by 96 per cent, from Rs 50 crore to a mere Rs 2 crore. This would undoubtedly weaken efforts in coastal protection and resilience-building amidst growing sea-level rise and cyclone risks. The O-SMART programme, critical for modelling oceanic climate changes, received no allocation for the second consecutive year, limiting India’s ability to monitor changes in vulnerable coastal ecosystems. The National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC), Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP), and National Mission on Himalayan Studies (NMHS) were moved to the secretariat budget, earmarked as administrative expenses rather than key programmatic initiatives within the budget. All this was despite warnings from experts that if climate risks remain unmitigated, India faces the possibility of losing 24.7 per cent of its GDP by 2070, due to rising climate-induced disruptions.
The union government’s utter lack of intent and concern is laid bare in the fact that they are yet to set up a dedicated Climate Disaster Relief Fund, aimed at providing non-repayable aid to states during emergencies and ensuring sustained support in the aftermath of disasters. With more and more states facing the vagaries of nature, the creation of such a fund needs immediate attention. In the backdrop of the union government refusing to extend loan waivers to the victims of natural calamities like the Wayanad landslides of 2024, state governments should have considerable say in the fund’s administration. It is high time that the union government wakes up from its slumber and addresses climate change – an issue which affects peoples lives and livelihoods – with due seriousness.
On global warming and climate change, if we fail to act now, we risk being subjected to the recurrent crises that seek to restore “the equilibrium by destroying not only the means of life, enjoyment and development that have been produced, but also a great part of the productive forces themselves”, as warned by Engels. Therefore, “let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us.”
