Impacts of Extreme Climatic Events on Sustainable Urban Development in Coastal Regions: Selected Case Studies of India

Unequivocally, it is now evident that the earth’s climate has been changing with significant impacts on various counts and magnitudes. This is more prominent during the recent decades of the Anthropocene Epoch when extreme climatic events are occurring quite frequently, often leaving their irreparable imprints on contemporary human civilization. Given the trends of global warming under business as usual, it is expected that the higher reprehensive concentration pathways (RCPs) will be the reality to impoverish the vulnerable ecosystems, including human habitats. The change in thresholds of human adaptations in different geographic regions will necessitate more investments to recover from climatic hazards and disasters. As the countries, especially of the global south, is going to accumulate more people in the urban locations, extreme climatic events in the form of air pollution, urban heat island (UHI), urban drought, water scarcity, thunderstorm, cyclones, high-intensity rainfall, urban flooding and water logging, etc. are anticipated to jeopardize the urban environments with the consequence of increasing physical and social distresses to the inhabitants. In India, the rate of urbanization is still low, but the human population concentrated in urban centres is significantly high. Consequently, inadequate infrastructural facilities and amenities available to a greater section living on the edges, and threat to life and property to a sizeable number of population of the country are inevitable. As per records, urban areas situated in the coastal regions of the country, under the humid tropical environment, are becoming more vulnerable to extreme climatic events. Although improvement in weather forecasting systems has enabled the administration to reduce loss of life, the recurring hazards as stated earlier are incapacitating the day-to-day functions of the urban ecosystems in which the poorer section of the society is the principal victim. In this study, the prominent urban centres of both the east and west coasts of India have been selected, where a moderate climate is expected all year round due to the land-water interface; however, in recent times, these areas are experiencing extreme climatic events or hazards. Moreover, as these locations accommodate large concentrations of population, an assessment of their climatic hazard potentials needs to be studied for sustainable urban development that is both resilient and inclusive. The exercise will attempt to explore how climate change is responsible for enhanced extreme climatic events, leading to the adversities in the urban ecosystems of the coastal locations, and what mitigation, as well as adaptation strategies, may be recommended as appropriate to overcome the situation under various time windows. The analyses will be mostly done based on the review of published works of literature and recorded data, besides extensive use of satellite-based remotely sensed weather information available from various authentic sources.