While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoys spring air at the government consultations in Berlin, his compatriots at home are groaning under an unprecedented heat wave.

The situation is becoming even more unbearable because the new corona wave is forcing people to put on their masks again.

Temperatures in India in April hit the highest level in almost 125 years, official data shows.

South Asia is at the center of the approaching climate catastrophe.

Christopher Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.

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“South Asia is the most affected region.

If there is no adaptation, the climate risks will endanger around 15 percent of its gross domestic product by 2050.

The region is ten times more at risk than Europe.

The South Asian countries are particularly exposed to storms, floods and sea level rise, but droughts and heat waves are also likely to increase,” say the analysts at the American rating agency S&P Global.

A double-digit loss of economic power has resulted in tens of millions of unemployed, unstable regimes and refugee flows within and across countries.

Even if he sticks to his commitments, the rest of the world will also be hit hard by climate change: "In a moderate climate scenario, global losses in 2050 could amount to around 4 percent of gross domestic product," the analysts calculate.

“Disaster risks and their costs are likely to increase over time, particularly as they are expected to increase in the second half of this century.” increase – an increase of 40 percent compared to 2015.” However, the costs are not evenly distributed: “In the emerging countries, the loss of economic power due to climate catastrophes is 3.6 times higher than in wealthy countries.

Grab the charcoal

In the heat of these weeks, hundreds of millions of Indians and Pakistanis continue to work outdoors, most indoors are not air-conditioned.

According to scientists, more than a billion people could be affected by heat-related health problems.

Food security is also at stake: The heat has hit the northern states, the breadbasket, particularly hard - and this at a time of inflated food prices.

Not many of the approximately 1.5 billion people in India and Pakistan are familiar with such calculations.

But they feel the consequences of climate change with temperatures of 47 degrees in the northwest.

The values ​​are 5 percent “above normal”.

With the heat wave and accompanying drought leading to the fastest rise in energy consumption in at least 40 years and the price of oil doubling, coal is once again the choice.

The state-owned company Coal India, which accounts for around 80 percent of coal production, increased its output by 28 percent in April.

To keep routes free for additional coal trains, India has canceled 750 passenger trains.

At the climate conference in Glasgow last year, Modi pledged to reduce India's carbon emissions by 1 billion tons by 2030 and to feed half of its consumption from renewable energy.

In view of a hoped-for growth rate of around 7 percent, the increase in population and urbanization, experts have their doubts about this promise.

The experts at the American Wilson Center are expecting daily imports of 7.2 million barrels of oil alone in 2030, after 5 million at present.

India still gets almost 75 percent of its electricity from coal.

The consequences are obvious: productivity in the country falls when the trains don't run, when professors don't teach, when workers can only toil at night.

On the other hand, even more coal burning to cool the country leads to even higher temperatures in the medium term - a vicious circle from which there is currently no quick exit for the huge emerging economies.

Economists at S&P Global Risks describe the looming chain reaction: “Over time, lost productivity gains are likely to reduce future income upside potential.

Climate shocks arguably require higher public spending and thus lead to a higher debt burden.

The social consequences are security risks and changes in governance, accelerated by more frequent and severe acute risks (wildfires, floods and storms) and chronic risks (changing precipitation and temperature patterns and sea level rise).

Both acute and chronic risks can contribute to refugee flows.

These are an example of the social impact.”