Climate change in India

Satpura coal-fired power station

India is ranked seventh among the list of countries most affected by climate change in 2019. India emits about 3 gigatonnes CO2eq of greenhouse gases each year; about two and a half tons per person, which is less than the world average. The country emits 7% of global emissions, despite having 17% of the world population.

Quotes

• M. Berkelhammer led an international team to a cave in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, ‘among the wettest locations on Earth with an annual average precipitation in excess of 11,000 mm’, and studied the isotopic variations in a stalagmite: Oxygen 18 isotope as an index of precipitation, and the Uranium-Thorium method for absolute dating of the stalagmite, which went back almost 12,000 years for a growth of nearly 2 m. The results highlighted a ‘dramatic event ... ~ 4000 years ago when, over the course of approximately a decade, isotopic values abruptly rose above any seen during the early to mid-Holocene and remained at this anomalous state for almost two centuries.’ This suggested either ‘a shift toward an earlier Indian Summer Monsoon withdrawal or a general decline in the total amount of monsoon precipitation.’ The study’s ‘tight age constraints of the record show with a high degree of certainty that much of the documented deurbanization of the Indus Valley at 3.9 kyr B.P. occurred after multiple decades of a shift in the monsoon’s character....’
  • Berkelhammer, M., A. Sinha, L. Stott, H. Cheng, F. S. R. Pausata, and K. Yoshimura. ‘An Abrupt Shift in the Indian Monsoon 4000 Years Ago’, in Liviu Giosan, et al., eds, Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations, Geophysical Monograph Series 198, American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, 2012, pp. 75–87.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• To a considerable extent the process [of weakening of the political fabric of the Indus civilization] must have been linked to the hydrographic changes in the Sarasvati-Drishadvati system.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.
  • Chakrabarti, The Archaeology of Ancient Indian Cities, p. 140.

• Dales, who excavated Balakot, suggested that ‘a sudden rise in the Arabian Sea coastline of West Pakistan apparently took place sometime around the middle of the second millennium. This resulted in a disastrous increase in the already serious floods in the major river valleys. ... The Harappans were forced to migrate gradually to more fertile territory. There is now incontrovertible archaeological evidence that the major population shift was to the southeast into the area of the Kathiawar [= Saurashtra] peninsula....’
  • Dales, ‘The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro’, p. 43.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• Human societies are ultimately dependent on the climate and environment they live in. Climate change and environmental degradation very likely contributed to the decline of the Harappan Civilization from the twenty-first century BCE; that is a lesson which, in the twenty-first century CE, we ought to ponder on.
  • Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• Convincing evidence, collected from both archaeological and natural science investigations, refutes the popular theories of appreciable climatic change in the South Asian area during the past four to five thousand years ... Climate has thus been practically eliminated as a major factor in the environmental fortunes of the Harappan civilization.
  • G Dales, ‘Recent trends in the pre- and protohistoric archaeology of South Asia’, p. 131.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• More recently, the U.S. archaeologist Gregory Possehl supported this assessment: ‘The climate of this region [Greater Indus Valley] was not markedly different in the third millennium BC from the one we have today.’
  • G Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, p. 13.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• The Indian archaeologist Dilip K. Chakrabarti also argues that ‘there can be no question of aridity = decline of civilization correlation’ and complains that ‘there seem to be too many [environmental determinists] today.’
  • DK Chakrabarti and Saini, The Problem of the Sarasvati River, p. 37.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• The Indus settlements spanned a diverse range of environmental and ecological zones; therefore, correlation of evidence for climate change and the decline of Indus urbanism requires a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between settlement and climate across a substantial area.
  • Dixit et al., ‘Abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon in northwest India ~ 4100 yr ago’, p. 342.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• A climatic event cannot be blamed simplistically for [Harappan] collapse and de-urbanisation, but Quaternary science data make it clear that we cannot accept a view of climatic and environmental stability since the mid-Holocene in the region (as promoted by Possehl ...)
  • Madella and Fuller, ‘Palaeoecology and the Harappan Civilisation of South Asia: a reconsideration’, p. 1283.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.

• For a Civilization so widely distributed, no uniform ending need be postulated. Circumstances which affected it in the sub-montane lands of the central Indus may well have differed widely from those which it encountered south or east of the Indian Desert and in the watery coastlands of the Rann of Kutch. Later archaeologists often disagreed, finding little or no evidence for a climate significantly different in Harappan times from today’s. And the evidence at present available indicates that such indeed was the case.
  • M Wheeler, Civilizations of the Indus Valley and Beyond, p. 72.
  • quoted from Danino, M. (2020). Climate, Environment, and the Harappan Civilization. R. Chakrabarti, Critical Themes in Environmental History of India, 333-377.