The trillion-dollar threat: Why the Indian economy needs a second green revolution

When we crystal-gaze, there is a pathway that emerges where India could still achieve the full potential of the positive economic narrative while minimising some of the worst effects of the climate change narrative. In this pathway, India’s green transformation is a vital and integral component of its overall economic transformation.

To keep growing sustainably, India has to move away from a carbon-intensive growth model to a green growth-led one.

India@2047 — the 100th year of its independence — is poised for two highly divergent scenarios: one, a scenario of exceptional growth and economic prosperity, and the other, a scenario of extreme climate-led disruption and economic loss.

India’s first Green Revolution helped it overcome a hunger crisis by transforming the agriculture sector into a modern industrial system. The time is now ripe for India’s second Green Revolution, to shift away from a carbon-intensive legacy growth model and leapfrog into a green growth model led by low or no emissions technologies.

There is emerging consensus that by 2047, India would have overtaken the US as the second largest economy. For the next three decades, India will be home to not just the largest, but also one of the youngest populations in the world. In this narrative of economic transformation — in an otherwise rapidly ageing world — India’s youthful workforce will power the global economy over the next three decades, just like China’s workforce powered the world for the past three decades. This much-awaited economic transformation is expected to lift hundreds of millions of India’s citizens above the poverty line, and help the country enter the league of middle-income countries.

On the other hand, there is also emerging consensus around an alternative narrative, in which India is expected to be one of the most economically harmed by climate change. In this narrative, India will be exposed to a range of adverse climate outcomes — rising sea levels, groundwater scarcity, extreme weather patterns (heat waves, droughts, extreme rainfall and so on), fall in crop production and a rise in health hazards.

India is expected to soon be one of the first places to experience heat waves that cross the survivability limit for a healthy human being sitting in the shade; and without targeted climate adaptation, millions of Indians could be exposed to a lethal heatwave as early as 2030. Across six port cities — Chennai, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Surat and Visakhapatnam — 28.6 million people could be exposed to coastal flooding if sea levels rise by 50 cm. The assets exposed to the flooding would be worth about $4 trillion. In this grim outlook, some analysts estimate that India could lose over 25% of its GDP annually by 2050 due to climate change risks.

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