From SohajPedia, the daily world briefing
Climate change in India
India did not cause most of the world's warming, but it is living with some of its sharpest consequences. The country's average temperature has already risen by about 0.89 °C compared with the early twentieth century, its seas are climbing, its glaciers are retreating — and all of this is happening in the world's most populous nation, which still needs far more energy than it currently uses.
Climate change in India, measured
India's share of global emissions (%)
India emits about 1.85 tonnes per person per year — well below the world average — yet ranks among the largest total emitters because of its population.
The changes already measured
These are not projections; they are in the instruments. India's average surface temperature for 2015–2024 ran about 0.89 °C above the 1901–1930 level. The tropical Indian Ocean has warmed at roughly 0.12 °C per decade since 1950, and sea level in the North Indian Ocean rose about 3.3 millimetres a year between 1993 and 2017. The human edge of those numbers shows up in events like the severe heatwave of May 2022, when temperatures in the region reached 51 °C — the kind of heat scientists calculate climate change has made vastly more likely than it once was.
Rivers, rain and the coast
India's water system is being squeezed from both ends. On the coasts, rising seas and erosion are eating land — low-lying islands in the Sundarbans have already gone under, displacing thousands — and a 2025 study found Mumbai and Kolkata face the country's highest flood risks. Inland, warming on the Tibetan Plateau is shrinking the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Yamuna, the rivers hundreds of millions of farmers depend on. Meanwhile the monsoon itself is shifting: average southwest monsoon rainfall declined over parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the north-east between 1951 and 2024, even as individual downpours grow more violent.
What India emits
India emits about 3 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases (in CO₂ equivalent) a year — around 7% of the global total, making it one of the largest emitters in absolute terms. Per person, the picture reverses: 1.85 tonnes a year, a fraction of what an average American or even Chinese citizen produces, and India's entire historical contribution since 1851 is about 4.62% of the world's. Coal-fired electricity, industry, transport and agriculture are the main sources. This imbalance — high exposure, low historical responsibility — is the core of India's negotiating position at summits such as COP31.
The response — and the tension
India has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2070, and under the Paris Agreement to cut the emissions intensity of its economy by 33–35% by 2030, alongside a large expansion of renewable energy. The tension is obvious and openly debated: hundreds of millions of Indians still use very little energy, and development demands more of it. How India squares that circle — growing richer without following the high-carbon path the West took — is arguably the single most important climate question in the world.
Frequently asked questions
See also
References
Photograph and chart via Wikimedia Commons.