Analysis | Climate change linked to 60,000 farmer suicides in India over the last three decades, study claims
Rising temperatures and the resultant stress on India’s agricultural sector may have contributed to increase in suicides over the past 30 years, research shows
Illustrating the extreme sensitivity of the Indian agricultural industry to spikes in temperature, the study from the University of California, Berkeley, found an increase of just 1 degree Celsius on an average day during the growing season was associated with 67 more suicides.
An increase of 5 degrees on any one day was associated with an additional 335 deaths, the study published in the journal PNAS found. In total, it estimates that 59,300 agricultural sector suicides over the past 30 years could be attributed to warming.
Temperature increases outside the growing season showed no significant impact on suicide rates, suggesting stress on the agriculture industry was the source of the increase in suicides.
Also supporting the theory was that rainfall increases of as little as 1cm each year were associated with an average 7 per cent drop in the suicide rate. So beneficial was the strong rainfall that suicide rates were lower for the two years that followed, researcher Tamma Carleton found.
Farm sector suicides in India decreased last year, but remain at epidemic levels in some states and are a source of immense pressure on legislators.