Mumbai: From prolonged heat stress and sleep loss to rising “climatic suitability” for dengue and malaria transmission, climate change is posing a growing range of health risks to Indians, according to the ’10th Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Report’ released on Wednesday.
The report found that the health harms of climate change worldwide grew faster in 2016-2025, the decade after the Paris Agreement, than in the preceding 10 years. Globally, annual average heat-related deaths rose by nearly 36% after the Paris agreement came into force, with heat linked to 7.1 lakh deaths in 2023 alone. Extreme drought affected nearly 52% of the world’s land for at least one month in 2025, said the authors, calling for climate change to be recognised as a global health emergency.
Because efforts to tackle the crisis failed to keep pace, it said, this happened.
The report listed worsening heat effects in India: half of the heatwave days Indians were exposed to between 2016 and 2025 were attributable to climate change. Clean-energy investment reached a record $2.1 trillion in 2025, while cleaner air prevented 3.23 lakh deaths annually in 77 nations where fossil-fuel-related pollution declined since 2016. Yet fossil fuels supply over 80% of the world’s energy.
Indians also faced over 2,600 hours a year when temperatures posed a “moderate” or “higher” risk of heat stress during outdoor activities such as brisk walking – over 200 hours more than the average in the 1990s. Bhagwan Kesbhat of the Waatavaran Climate Environment & Sustainability Foundation said the health consequences of climate change were no longer confined to agriculture and livestock. “At a parishad we recently organised in Marathwada, a local panchayat member said more women were suffering miscarriages due to heat-related health complications than ever before,” he said. “We are still talking about climate change when we should be speaking about ‘climate boiling’,” said Kesbhat. Despite progress on some fronts, the report said global efforts remained inadequate.
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