Telangana CM Revanth Reddy urges farmers to skip one paddy crop to prioritize drinking water amid a severe El Niño-induced drought.
With reservoirs at less than half capacity and rainfall deficit at 28%, the state faces a critical water crisis.
Farmers' cooperation is vital to secure water for the next 8-10 months.
Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has made a distress call to farmers, asking them to forgo one seasonal paddy crop to help secure the state’s drinking water supply.
“Farmers have always answered the prayers of people. This time, we will need their help in securing drinking water supply for Telangana,” Reddy said on October 15.
Reddy’s appeal comes as the state grapples with the unfolding threat of a super El Niño. “This El Niño is unprecedented, worse than what we have seen in decades. It has created immense pressure on the water and power situation in the state,” he said.
According to government assessment, the dry spell has threatened the state’s water security. By mid-October, the state recorded a nearly 28 per cent rainfall deficit. It is now at such a dire state that the state’s drinking water need is threatened for the next eight to 10 months.
The state’s reservoirs have just 200 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet of water, against the normal of 462 TMC for this time of year.
Reddy’s strategy is to use this limited available water till the next monsoon. To achieve this, the biggest water user, agriculture, must sacrifice to prioritise the drinking water need.
In Telangana, farmers have not taken up paddy cultivation in estimated 1.3 million hectares of farms. But, currently, paddy has been sown in 5.3 million Ha of farms. The water scarcity may affect the standing crops.
Across India, states have started preparing for the El Niño impacts, touted as the “super” one. It is not just super, but a hyper one also.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasts that the ongoing El Niño event in the equatorial Pacific Ocean - already colloquially termed the super one - could become the strongest since observations began in 1950. The event will peak around December this year.
Sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region, an area of the equatorial Pacific Ocean used to measure the strength of El Niño, have already reached unprecedented levels. “This year's El Niño continues its climb into uncharted waters; Niño3.4 region anomalies are now at a 3.4°C above normal, higher than any prior El Niño event on record,” commented Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Seventh Assessment Report, adding, “September monthly Niño3.4 anomalies also set a record at 2.9°C (beating 2015 and 1877's 2.75°C).” The 1876-1878 El Niño’s strength is known from reconstructed data.
“This El Niño became the strongest one on record during September and is headed for a near 4°C peak in December,” wrote Ben Noll, a meteorologist with the Washington Post, on X. This is why the event is being termed as hyper one.
A severe economic blow
How is the world preparing for this episode of El Niño? Across countries to be impacted by the natural climate variation there are national plans in place to face the consequences. From extreme dry events to storms to rainfall, these plans are just to hedge the losses through relief and support provisions.
Like India has identified most vulnerable districts and mounted drought-proofing activities to save crops. Already many states have declared drought enabling official relief operations supporting farmers.
But these plans are clinical in terms of impacts; they just address to the broad impact framework. It has been observed that El Niños are distinct in their impacts. The experience of past one may not be same in the next episode.
The experiences from past super El Niños - 1982-1983, 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 - will not serve as a template for preparing for the current one. Add to it, the rapidly warming planet must have impacted the natural episode’s unfolding.
So, on one hand we are not certain about the severity of the current phase. Only once it reaches to its crescendo that we will have the experiences of what it might wreak havoc. On the other, how the warming of the planet is impacting the phenomenon would be known as it unfolds, though through study of the past episodes.
The already hot planet might offset typical impacts of an El Niño. Studies show that warm oceans beyond the area where El Niño is formed subdued many typical impacts of the 2023-2024 El Niño. This year we have similar situations with the tropical and Northern Pacific Ocean warmer than normal.
On one aspect, there is certainty: the economic losses an El Niño causes. The 1997-1998 El Niño, termed as the “El Niño of the century”, caused a global GDP reduction of $5.7 trillion. The 1982-1983 super one caused a loss of $4.1 trillion. To make sense of this loss, the 2008 economic recession reduced global GDP by $2 trillion.
There is certainty on the fact that the economic losses from the present one would be higher than previous ones. In the study “Persistent effect of El Niño on global economic growth”, published in Science, researchers from Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA, found, “In an emissions scenario consistent with current mitigation pledges, increased ENSO amplitude and teleconnections from warming are projected to cause $84 trillion in 21st-century economic losses, but these effects are shaped by stochastic variation in the sequence of El Niño and La Niña events.”
In a more specific forecast, the Peterson Institute for International Economics said recently, “If the intensity of El Niño winds up of similar magnitude to the last super El Niño in 1997 - 1998, the contemporaneous economic losses will be on the order of $986 billion in 2027. Unless the international community and national-level policymakers start acting now, those losses could rise to at least $7.2 trillion over the following five years.”
It further said, “This six-year cumulative figure does not assume any additional shocks. It simply reflects the compounding effect of reduced investment in the years following the initial event, which is precisely where the policy window lies. The one-year losses- $986 billion- amount to roughly 0.8 percent of global GDP.”
Most of the countries that will be worst impacted are poor and developing. Agricultural losses would be huge that is also the key sustenance in most of these countries.
According to UNICEF, “Unusually wet and dry conditions are expected to increase the likelihood of extreme weather events, including heavy flooding and severe droughts, threatening the lives, health, and education of children in nearly 100 countries and territories.”
The super El Niño is unfolding at a time when the global food security is threatened due to wars and also major droughts gripping the world. Countries are also constrained in resources needed to avert the existing food insecurity. Thus, the new challenge will test how the world comes together for another planetary emergency.