By Business India Editorial

Nine states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Punjab, are among the world's top 50 regions at risk of damage to the built environment due to climate change hazards, according to a new report ‘Gross Domestic Climate Risk’ published this week. 

Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI), part of a group of companies committed to quantifying and communicating the costs of climate change, calculated the physical climate risk to the built environment in over 2,600 states and provinces around the world in 2050. 

The data compared these territories according to modelled projections of damage to buildings and properties from extreme weather and climate change such as flooding, forest fires, heatwave, and sea level rise. 

XDI also noted that entities not on the list are not ‘low risk’ and said many states and provinces facing high risk from extreme weather climate hazards are not appearing at the top of this ranking due to their lower number of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. 

As per analysis, 80 per cent of the top 50 most at-risk states and provinces in 2050 are in China, the US, and India. 

India is followed by China with the highest number of states in climate risk to the built environment. The nine Indian states include Bihar (22nd spot), Uttar Pradesh (25), Assam (28), Rajasthan (32), Tamil Nadu (36), Maharashtra (38), Gujarat (48), Punjab (50), and Kerala (52), it said.

Assam would see the maximum increase – over 330 per cent by 2050 as compared to 1990 – in climate risk to the built environment.

This is the first time there has been a physical climate risk analysis focused exclusively on the built environment, comparing every state, province, and territory in the world.

In China, which dominates the ranking, at-risk states and provinces are concentrated in the globally-connected east and south, along the floodplains and deltas of the Yangtze and Pearl rivers. 

In the US, the economically important states of California, Texas and Florida would be most affected.

Other countries with multiple provinces and states in the top 50 include Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia. In Europe, high-ranking states encompass the cities of London, Milan, Munich and Venice.

Rohan Hamden, XDI CEO, said, “This is the most sophisticated global analysis of physical climate risk to date, offering a breadth and depth and granularity on a scale we haven't seen before. Now – for the first time – the finance industry can directly compare Mumbai, New York and Berlin using a like-for-like methodology."