A climate resilience pathway between India and China
The article explores the potential for India and China to cooperate on climate resilience strategies to combat shared challenges like extreme weather, flooding, and rapid urbanization. It suggests that despite strained bilateral relations, the urgency of climate-driven disasters could serve as a catalyst for scientific and technological collaboration.
Why it matters
Climate change is increasingly threatening the economic stability and public safety of the world's two most populous nations, making cross-border cooperation a potential necessity for survival.
This year, El Niño delayed the monsoon in India. When the rains arrived, they were intense, with cities such as Mumbai and Surat receiving a month’s rainfall in a matter of days. Regions in Assam and Odisha have experienced severe flooding, resulting in loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Similar conditions have recently affected large swathes of China’s provinces, particularly Guangxi, Shaanxi and Gansu. Such extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common, threatening economic growth, food security, and public well-being in the two most populous countries.
In both cases, experts attribute these short, high-intensity bursts to climate change which is causing higher atmospheric temperatures and rapidly warming oceans. Mitigating and recovering from these frequent and large-scale events will become increasingly important for China and India to address. Given the scale of the challenge, could climate resilience become an opening for India-China cooperation?
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