Climate Change and Sustainability: Understanding India’s Coastal States

Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet, with India being no exception. The peninsular nation ranked seventh in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021 and third in the number of natural disasters since the year 2000 as per EM-DAT. India’s coastal states face unique climate adversities due to their population density, industrial dynamics, and environmental vulnerabilities. These states are comparatively rich and economically important, as they together contribute to more than half of the nation’s GDP, but a considerable increase in the frequency of climate-related disasters across the coastal region has disrupted their economies, people’s lives, and the environment. Interestingly, they are also among the leading emitters of carbon, a key cause of the problem. Hence, it is observed that coastal states exhibit distinctive challenges and opportunities with respect to the climate change conundrum. In this context, the current paper aims to provide a climate change profile of the nine coastal states of India by examining their emerging trends in three integrated dimensions of sustainable development as outlined in Agenda 2030: the economic, social, and environmental. The paper centres on the Sustainable Development Goals pertaining to Sustainable Cities (Goals 11.5, 11.b), Climate Action (Goal 13.1), and Life below Water (Goals 14.2, 14.5). Descriptive and trend analyses have been employed for analysing the economic, demographic, climate change, social, and developmental parameters of these states. Effective public policies and successful climate adaptation measures, followed by an analysis of some of the coastal cities in these states that serve as inclusive growth models, are also explored in this work.