Farm incomes may fall in India by 15%

Climate impacts would tear through G20 countries without urgent action to reduce emissions, and in India, it could mean declines in rice and wheat production, causing economic losses of up to 81 billion euros and a loss of 15 per cent of farmers' incomes by 2050, a new report revealed on Thursday.

The first study of its kind, the G20 Climate Impacts Atlas by the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), the leading Italian research centre on climate change and National Focal Point for the IPCC, collates scientific projections of how climate impacts will play out in the world's richest countries over the coming years. The research shows that rising temperatures and intense heatwaves could cause severe droughts; threatening essential water supplies for agriculture, causing huge loss of human life and increasing the chance of deadly fires.

Some countries will be even worse hit, such as Canada, which could see at least 4 per cent knocked off its GDP by 2050 and over 13 per cent -- 133 billion euros -- by 2100. Donatella Spano of the CMCC, who coordinated the report, said: "From droughts, heatwaves and sea level rise, to dwindling food supplies and threats to tourism -- these findings show how severely climate change will hit the world's biggest economies, unless we act now.

Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, said: "The window to act is closing fast."