Alternative Technologies for a Climate Change Resilient India

In May 2010 a heat wave killed more than a thousand people in Ahmedabad, as temperatures rose above forty seven degrees. The city's response was practical and unusually modest. In 2013 it launched the first Heat Action Plan in South Asia, which combined early warnings, public awareness, drinking water points, training for doctors and a campaign to promote cool roofs painted with reflective white lime in poor neighbourhoods. Studies later estimated that the plan prevented hundreds of deaths each year. The case shows what the topic means by alternative technologies for climate resilience, which are not only grand machines but also well chosen tools suited to a particular danger.

India's vulnerability is large. Its long coastline faces cyclones and rising seas, its Himalayan glaciers feed rivers on which hundreds of millions depend, and its farmers rely on a monsoon that is becoming more erratic. A very large share of the population works in agriculture, which is directly exposed to heat and rain. The country is also a major emitter in absolute terms, because of its size, though its emissions per person remain low. India therefore needs technologies for two tasks. The first is mitigation, which reduces emissions, and the second is adaptation, which prepares for the changes already under way.

On the side of mitigation, solar power has transformed what is possible. The cost of solar electricity in India fell by roughly four fifths between 2010 and 2018, and auctions in 2017 produced tariffs lower than those of new coal plants. The International Solar Alliance, launched by India and France at the Paris climate conference in 2015, was formalised with its headquarters in Gurugram, and its first summit was held in 2018. Cochin International Airport became the first in the world to run entirely on solar power in 2015. India has set a target of 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022, and wind, small hydro and biomass are part of the mix.

Other mitigation technologies matter as much. Electric vehicles and mass transit can reduce the pollution of cities, and the Delhi Metro has been credited with removing hundreds of thousands of vehicle trips every day. Energy efficient appliances, promoted through the LED bulb programme that distributed hundreds of millions of bulbs at low prices, cut electricity demand. Cleaner cooking, through the Ujjwala scheme of liquefied gas connections to poor households, reduces both smoke and the burning of biomass. Batteries and storage will determine how far renewables can replace coal, which still supplies about three quarters of India's electricity.

Batteries and storage will determine how far renewables can replace coal, which still supplies about three quarters of India's electricity.

Adaptation technologies protect people where change cannot be avoided. Farmers need seeds that can survive stress, and Indian and international researchers have developed rice varieties such as Swarna Sub1 that can survive two weeks of flooding, as well as drought tolerant strains of pulses and millets. Drip irrigation and micro sprinklers save water and raise yields. The System of Rice Intensification uses fewer seeds and less water. Crop insurance based on satellite data and weather stations can speed payments to farmers after a bad season. Even simple measures such as sowing advisories sent by mobile phone help farmers to adjust to shifting rains.

Early warning has saved the most lives. The India Meteorological Department's improved forecasting of cyclones, together with state evacuation planning, allowed Odisha to move a million people ahead of Cyclone Phailin in 2013, in contrast with the roughly ten thousand deaths of 1999. Flood forecasting, heat alerts and lightning warnings by mobile messages are extending the protection. Coastal communities are restoring mangroves, which act as natural barriers against storm surges. Technology in this domain is as much about information and organisation as about hardware. Resilience is built before the disaster, in the quiet work of design, training and maintenance.

Traditional knowledge supplies alternatives too. The johads, small earthen check dams revived by Rajendra Singh in the villages of Alwar in Rajasthan from the 1980s, recharged groundwater and brought rivers back to life. The stepwells and kunds of the arid west, the tank systems of the south and the bamboo drip irrigation of Meghalaya are examples of climate adaptation developed over centuries. In Ladakh, the engineer Sonam Wangchuk invented ice stupas in 2013, cones of frozen water formed in winter that melt slowly in spring, to supply irrigation when streams are low. The best resilient technology often marries scientific design with local practice.

Yet technology alone does not make a country resilient. Cost is a barrier, since a drip irrigation system or a solar pump is beyond the means of the poorest farmers without credit or subsidy. Skills and maintenance are lacking in many villages, and gadgets that are installed with enthusiasm may be idle a year later. Some technologies can even be maladaptive. Subsidised electricity for tube wells has encouraged farmers to pump groundwater faster than it is replenished, and an apparent adaptation to dry spells has deepened the water crisis of Punjab and Haryana.

Choices about technology are also political. The decision to expand coal while promoting solar, the siting of large renewable parks on land used by herders and the displacement of communities by large dams all raise questions of justice. Resilience is not equally distributed, and the people most exposed, such as landless labourers, fishers and slum dwellers, have the least ability to purchase protection. Technology should be designed with them in mind, and decisions should be open to their participation. Investment in public health, housing and social security is a form of climate adaptation too.

The topic, therefore, points to a portfolio and not a single solution. India will need centralised and decentralised energy, high technology and low, global science and local memory. The harder question is who will pay and who will decide. A resilient India is one in which the farmer in Bundelkhand, the fisher in the Sundarbans and the labourer in a Delhi slum can use the best available technology without being priced out, and whether the country can arrange that before the next heat wave or flood arrives is a matter that technology itself cannot settle.