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India is among five Asia-Pacific countries where agriculture faces consistently high heat stress, according to a new UN ESCAP report.
Rising temperatures threaten crop yields, livestock productivity, labour capacity and rural incomes under both low- and high-emissions scenarios.
Farmworkers are particularly vulnerable, with heat stress linked to dehydration, illness and lower productivity.
ESCAP calls for urgent action to integrate heat resilience into agricultural planning and early-warning systems.
India is among five countries in Asia and the Pacific where the agriculture sector faces consistently “high risk” from rising temperatures, according to a new United Nations report.
The risks — reduced crop yields, lower livestock productivity, declining labour capacity and deepening rural poverty traps — remained high under both low- and high-emissions scenarios, the 2025 Asia-Pacific Disaster Report, released on November 26, 2025 by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), found. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh were also placed in the high-risk category.
Agriculture contributes more than a quarter of the region’s GDP and employs the majority of the rural labour force, making it central to food security, livelihoods and employment. But extreme heat is already pushing crops and livestock to “severe stress”, the report warned. In 2022, India’s staple wheat crop withered following unprecedented March heatwaves during a critical late growth stage.
To assess agricultural vulnerability to heat, ESCAP developed an Agricultural Heat Stress Score (AHSS). The metric combines the Warm Spell Duration Index (WSDI) — which measures consecutive hot days — with the share of agriculture in gross domestic product (GDP), the extent of agricultural employment and the proportion of land under cultivation.
Countries were categorised into moderate, high and extreme-high risk bands based on percentile rankings of their AHSS and WSDI values. Heat stress was analysed across three periods: a historical baseline (1995–2014), and future projections under both low-emissions (SSP1-2.6) and high-emissions (SSP5-8.5) scenarios. Several Pacific Island countries — including Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Marshall Islands — showed moderate to high future exposure.
ENEA: East and North-East Asia, NCA: North and Central Asia, Pacific; SEA: South-East Asia, SSWA: South and South-West Asia; SSP1-2.6: IPCC’s scenario in which global carbon dioxide emissions are cut severely, but not as fast as required. It would reach net zero after 2050; SSP5-8.5: IPCC’s scenario in which current carbon dioxide emissions levels to roughly double by 2050
Source: ESCAP calculations based on World Bank data and Copernicus, Climate Data Store; Bubble size depicts volume of agriculture sector in total GDP in USD millions
Under SSP5-8.5 (a scenario in which emissions roughly double by 2050) Myanmar, Fiji, Laos and Uzbekistan exhibited worsening vulnerability under unmitigated emissions. These countries rely heavily on agriculture but have limited adaptive infrastructure or access to adaptation finance.
“These countries currently have moderate exposure, but under SSP5-8.5 increasing heat duration combined with structural agricultural dependence places them at growing risk,” it said.
Between 2008 and 2018, agriculture absorbed more than a quarter of global losses and damages from climate-related disasters. With warming expected to exceed 1.5°C, the impacts are projected to deepen, the report warned.
Labour productivity may fall by up to 27 per cent under high heat conditions, reducing individual incomes and weakening the resilience of food systems.
ESCAP’s analysis of 90 peer-reviewed studies on agricultural workers worldwide found that farmworkers experienced significantly higher rates of heat stress, dehydration and heat-related illness, often worsened by limited access to shade, drinking water and rest. Many cases go unrecognised or untreated, particularly among migrant and informal labourers.
Evidence suggested that sustained exposure to heat reduced physical performance, increased core body temperature and impaired decision-making.
“Ensuring food security in the Asia-Pacific region will increasingly hinge on how well the region can adapt its agricultural systems to the new reality of more frequent and intense heat stress,” the report pointed out.
There was an urgent need to mainstreaming heat resilience in agriculture through integrating more granular climate risk information into decision-making for early warning systems, including cross-sectoral planning and public investment, ESCAP stressed.