Troubling climate, health and development indicators

India is facing a mounting crisis on multiple environmental and development fronts. This is the warning that the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has sounded as a sobering alarm. The think tank’s annual “State of India’s Environment in Figures 2025” report, released in the capital on June 4, 2025, offered a stark data-led portrait of a nation grappling with extreme weather, declining public health, stalled infrastructure and deepening economic strain, according to a DTE press release. Using 48 indicators across four thematic areas, environment, agriculture, public health and human development, the report ranked all 36 states and union territories.

The year 2024 was recorded as India’s hottest year, with 25 states witnessing extreme and erratic rainfall. Alarmingly, as an analysis of the report by ClimateFactChecks states on its website, extreme weather events were reported on nearly 88% of the calendar days in the year. This climatic volatility displaced 5.4 million people within the country — the highest number of internal displacements due to climate disasters since 2013. Assam alone accounted for nearly half of these displacements, highlighting the vulnerability of northeastern regions to flooding and riverine erosion.

While Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Goa top the charts in individual categories, the broader picture is bleak, says the DTE press release. No state emerges as a consistent performer across all domains and even top-ranked states struggle with fundamental issues such as pollution, waste management and access to health care. Andhra Pradesh led in environmental management, thanks to its forest and biodiversity conservation efforts. Yet it fared poorly in sewage treatment and river pollution control. Sikkim’s organic farming and sustainable land-use practices helped it top the agriculture rankings, but it lagged in farmer welfare.

Goa is the best in public health and infrastructure, with the country’s highest rate of medically certified deaths. Still, it faced a shortage of hospital beds and low female labour force participation. Large, populous states — including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal, home to nearly half of India’s population — ranked poorly across all categories, leaving vast swathes of the population vulnerable to climate and health shocks, according to the press release.

The press release adds that the data made it clear that 2024 was a watershed moment. It was India’s warmest year on record, with 25 states experiencing record-breaking rainfall. Extreme weather events triggered 5.4 million internal displacements. Floods alone caused two-thirds of the displacement, the report found. India’s greenhouse gas emissions reached their highest global share – 7.8% – since 1970. More worryingly, the rate of emissions growth has accelerated in recent years, rising by nearly one percentage point between 2020 and 2023 alone, it stated.

The country continued to overdraw its groundwater reserves, with 135 districts now extracting water from depths exceeding 40 metres – nearly double the number in 2014. Toxic heavy metals were found in almost half of the country’s monitored river sites in 2022. Despite its 2026 deadline, the government has remediated only half of its legacy waste, the report said. Waste of all kinds is soaring. E-waste rose by 147 per cent in just seven years. Plastic waste, despite a partial ban, hit a record 4.14 million tonnes in 2022-23. Forest diversions for development reached a decade-high last year, with 29,000 hectares cleared, mostly in states like Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, the report stated.

These diversions, the press release highlights, which disrupt wildlife corridors, are one of the causes of the country’s rising human-animal conflict rates, experts said. Air pollution continues to extract a deadly toll. Since 2021, residents in 13 Indian capitals, including Delhi, have breathed unsafe air one in every three days. Life expectancy in Delhi is nearly eight years shorter due to air pollution.

In Lucknow, it is over six years. The report points out that in Uttar Pradesh, nearly two-thirds of all health expenses were borne by individuals. Kerala and West Bengal also recorded alarmingly high levels of private spending. Economic precarity is also deepening, the report revealed. Adjusted for inflation, incomes for salaried and self-employed workers declined between 2017 and 2023. Over 73% of India’s workforce is informal and more than half of regular workers lack basic protections like paid leave or contracts.