India faces test of climate leadership

The Germanwatch Climate Risk Index 2026, released this week at the ongoing COP30 Summit in Belem, Brazil, places India ninth among the countries most affected by climate disasters over the past three decades. The finding serves less as a ranking and more as a reckoning — that climate risk is no longer a peripheral issue of environment policy but the central challenge shaping India’s developmental future.

Between 1995 and 2024, India endured nearly 430 extreme weather events, claiming over 80,000 lives, affecting 1.3 billion people, and inflicting economic losses of around USD 170 billion, according to Germanwatch. These include familiar and painful markers — the 1999 Odisha super cyclone, the 2013 Uttarakhand floods, and the record-breaking heatwaves of 2024 that scorched much of northern and central India. Each has left a lasting scar, collectively revealing a pattern of vulnerability that is both structural and systemic.

India’s geography and development model amplify its exposure to climate extremes. Floods, cyclones and droughts repeatedly strike densely populated regions, undoing hard-won progress in poverty reduction and infrastructure. In 2024 alone, Germanwatch notes, extreme monsoon rains and flash floods affected more than eight million people across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tripura.

The fiscal impact is equally daunting. Relief and rehabilitation costs routinely divert public spending away from education, healthcare and infrastructure — sectors already under strain. Climate disasters, once viewed as episodic shocks, now represent a recurring economic drag, a “silent tax on growth” that India can ill afford.

Against this backdrop, India has brought a sharper moral and legal argument to the COP30 negotiations. Speaking on behalf of the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) and Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) groups, India has reaffirmed that climate finance is a legal obligation, not an act of benevolence. Citing Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, the Indian delegation reminded developed nations that they are bound to provide financial resources for mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer and capacity building.

At the opening plenary, India stated that the single greatest barrier to enhanced global climate ambition is the chronic shortfall in finance. It called for a fifteen-fold increase in adaptation finance, arguing that while mitigation projects attract most of the funding — often because they yield quantifiable carbon outcomes — adaptation efforts that protect vulnerable communities remain severely underfunded.

India also demanded clarity on what constitutes “climate finance” and urged the removal of intellectual property and market barriers that restrict technology transfer to developing countries. It cautioned that unilateral climate-related trade measures, such as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, risk morphing into protectionist tools that penalise developing economies rather than supporting their transition. Such measures, India warned, could violate Article 3.5 of the UNFCCC, which prohibits trade restrictions disguised as climate action.

The Germanwatch findings and India’s assertive stance at COP30 converge on a single truth: for developing countries, climate adaptation is not a side issue but a development imperative.

India’s vulnerability — reflected in its ranking on the Climate Risk Index — is rooted in decades of uneven urbanisation, deforestation, and groundwater overuse. To address this, the country must treat resilience as the foundation of growth. That requires integrating climate considerations into every aspect of policy and planning.

First, infrastructure design must anticipate extremes, not averages. Roads, bridges, irrigation systems and power grids need to be climate-proofed through resilience standards integrated into the PM Gati Shakti and National Infrastructure Pipeline frameworks.

Second, nature-based solutions — mangrove restoration, watershed management and afforestation under the Green India Mission — should move from the periphery of policy to the centre. They offer cost-effective buffers against floods and cyclones while generating livelihoods.

Third, resilience must be localised. Empowering panchayats and urban local bodies with adaptation funds and decision-making authority will ensure solutions that reflect local risk profiles. Establishing a National Climate Resilience Fund, accessible at sub-national levels, could institutionalise this approach.

Parallel to adaptation, India’s energy transition will determine its long-term resilience. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2025, also launched at COP30, reports that electricity demand is growing faster than total energy consumption, driven by urbanisation, cooling needs and data centres. It projects that coal and oil demand will peak globally before 2030, while renewables — especially solar — will dominate new capacity.

For India, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Accelerating clean energy deployment can enhance resilience by reducing dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports and by creating a more distributed, shock-resistant power system. Investments in solar, wind, grid storage and decentralised microgrids can ensure that energy security and climate action advance together.

India’s position at COP30 — rooted in equity, multilateralism and “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR-RC) — underscores its transformation from a passive recipient of climate impacts to an active shaper of climate policy. It has reminded developed countries of their historical and ongoing responsibilities and called on them to reach net-zero earlier, invest in negative emissions technologies, and honour long-standing finance and technology commitments.

By pressing these points, India is not merely defending its national interest; it is articulating the collective voice of the developing world. Its insistence on fairness, transparency, and adequate finance is vital if global climate cooperation is to retain legitimacy.

The Germanwatch ranking is a warning, but also an invitation. It calls for a new social contract that ties growth to sustainability, and justice to resilience. India’s next development leap must embed climate risk into its economic logic — from agriculture and housing to industry and trade.

As negotiations continue in Belem, the stakes are high. For India, the path forward is clear: resilience must be built into the core of its development model, and global climate governance must evolve to reflect equity in responsibility and capacity. Climate vulnerability may have defined India’s past three decades, but with foresight, investment and fair cooperation, the next three can define its leadership — turning exposure into endurance, and risk into resolve.

The writer is a researcher specialising in climate policy, resource governance, and sustainable development.