Sectoral Impacts of El Niño and Climate Change on India's Industri-al Economy: A Case Study on Sustainable Economic Resilience
Authors
NSB Academy Bangalore (India)
Independent Researcher (India)
Tongmyong University, Busan (India)
NSB Academy Bangalore (India)
IMED, BVDU, Pune shradha (India)
Article Information
DOI: 10.51584/IJRIAS.2026.11050094
Subject Category: Environment
Volume/Issue: 11/5 | Page No: 1071-1090
Publication Timeline
Submitted: 2026-05-15
Accepted: 2026-05-20
Published: 2026-06-02
Abstract
This study examines the implications of El Niño on the Indian industrial economy in the context of climate change, with a focus on sectoral risks, economic disruptions, and emerging growth opportunities. The study adopts a qualitative and analytical approach using historical El Niño trends, secondary economic data, sec-toral performance analysis, and climate-related industrial indicators to evaluate the impact on major indus-tries in India. The findings indicate that El Niño negatively affects agriculture, commodity supply chains, and food inflation due to weak monsoon conditions and rising temperatures. However, industries related to cool-ing appliances, irrigation and water technologies, renewable energy backup systems, healthcare, and consum-er durables show strong growth potential during El Niño years. Climate change is further accelerating the demand for climate-resilient infrastructure and adaptive industrial strategies. This study provides an integrat-ed perspective linking climate phenomena with industrial economics in India. It highlights how El Niño acts not only as an environmental risk but also as a catalyst for industrial transformation, investment opportuni-ties, and climate-resilient economic development.
Keywords
El Niño; Climate Change; Indian Industrial Economy; Sectoral Analysis; Renewable Energy; Agricultural Economics.
Downloads
References
1. Yadav, R.K.; Srinivas, G.; Chowdary, J.S. Atlantic Niño modulation of the Indian summer monsoon through Asian jet. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 2018, 1, 23. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-018-0029-5. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
2. Dwivedi, S.; Goswami, B.N.; Kucharski, F. Unraveling the missing link of ENSO control over the In-dian monsoon rainfall. Geophysical Research Letters 2015, 42(19), 8201–8207. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065909. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
3. Kripalani, R.H.; Kulkarni, A. Climatic impact of El Niño/La Niña on the Indian monsoon: A new per-spective. Weather 1997, 52(2), 39–46. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1997.tb06267.x. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
4. Cai, W.; Santoso, A.; Wang, G.; Yeh, S.W.; An, S.I.; Cobb, K.M.; Collins, M.; Guilyardi, E.; Jin, F.F.; Kug, J.S.; et al. ENSO and greenhouse warming. Nature Climate Change 2015, 5(9), 849–859. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
5. Timmermann, A.; Oberhuber, J.; Bacher, A.; Esch, M.; Latif, M.; Roeckner, E. Increased El Niño fre-quency in a climate model forced by future greenhouse warming. Nature 1999, 398(6729), 694–697. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
6. McPhaden, M.J.; Zebiak, S.E.; Glantz, M.H. ENSO as an integrating concept in Earth science. Science 2006, 314(5806), 1740–1745. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
7. Glantz, M.H. Currents of Change: El Niño’s Impact on Climate and Society; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2001. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
8. Stern, N. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review; Cambridge University Press: Cam-bridge, UK, 2007. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
9. Rasmusson, E.M.; Carpenter, T.H. The relationship between eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures and rainfall over India and Sri Lanka. Monthly Weather Review 1983, 111(3), 517–528. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
10. Adger, W.N. Social and ecological resilience: Are they related? Progress in Human Geography 2000, 24(3), 347–364. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
11. Mankiw, N.G. Macroeconomics, 10th ed.; Worth Publishers: New York, NY, USA, 2019. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
12. Fama, E.F. Efficient capital markets: A review of theory and empirical work. Journal of Finance 1970, 25(2), 383–417. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
13. Shiller, R.J. From efficient markets theory to behavioral finance. Journal of Economic Perspectives 2003, 17(1), 83–104. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
14. Homer-Dixon, T.F. Environmental scarcities and violent conflict. International Security 1994, 19(1), 5–40. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
15. [15] Dell, M.; Jones, B.F.; Olken, B.A. What do we learn from the weather? Journal of Economic Lit-erature 2014, 52(3), 740–798. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
16. Holling, C.S. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systemat-ics 1973, 4, 1–23. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
17. WCED. Our Common Future; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 1987. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
18. Malkiel, B.G. The efficient market hypothesis and its critics. Journal of Economic Perspectives 2003, 17(1), 59–82. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
19. Rogers, E.M. Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed.; Free Press: New York, NY, USA, 2003. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
20. Mol, A.P.J.; Sonnenfeld, D.A. Ecological modernization around the world. Environmental Politics 2000, 9(1), 3–16. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
21. Gadgil, S.; Gadgil, S. The Indian monsoon, GDP and agriculture. Economic and Political Weekly 2006, 41(47), 4887–4895. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
22. IPCC. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2022. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
23. Saunders, M.; Lewis, P.; Thornhill, A. Research Methods for Business Students, 8th ed.; Pearson Edu-cation: Harlow, UK, 2019. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
24. Creswell, J.W. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 4th ed.; Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2014. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
25. Sekaran, U.; Bougie, R. Research Methods for Business: A Skill-Building Approach, 7th ed.; Wiley: Chichester, UK, 2016. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
26. Yin, R.K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods, 6th ed.; Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2018. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
27. Bryman, A. Social Research Methods, 5th ed.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2016. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
28. Patton, M.Q. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd ed.; Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2002. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
29. Hair, J.F.; Black, W.C.; Babin, B.J.; Anderson, R.E. Multivariate Data Analysis, 8th ed.; Cengage Learning: Boston, MA, USA, 2019. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
30. Field, A. Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics, 5th ed.; Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2018. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
31. American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed.; APA Publishing: Washington, DC, USA, 2020. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
32. Auffhammer, M. Climate adaptive responses and future temperature impacts. Annual Review of Re-source Economics 2022, 14, 23–45. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
33. Dell, M.; Jones, B.F.; Olken, B.A. Temperature shocks and economic growth. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2012, 4(3), 66–95. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
34. Birthal, P.S.; Roy, D.; Negi, D.S. Assessing the impact of climate change on Indian agriculture. Agri-cultural Economics Research Review 2015, 28(2), 145–156. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
35. Ward, F.A.; Pulido-Velazquez, M. Water conservation in irrigation can increase water use. Proceed-ings of the National Academy of Sciences 2008, 105(47), 18215–18220. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
36. Sathaye, J.; Gupta, S. Greenhouse gas mitigation in India: Measuring the costs and benefits. Energy Policy 2015, 38(1), 317–328. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
37. Sailor, D.J.; Pavlova, A.A. Air conditioning market saturation and long-term response of residential cooling energy demand to climate change. Energy 2003, 28(9), 941–951. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
38. Lobell, D.B.; Schlenker, W.; Costa-Roberts, J. Climate trends and global crop production since 1980. Science 2011, 333(6042), 616–620. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
39. Wheeler, T.; von Braun, J. Climate change impacts on global food security. Science 2013, 341(6145), 508–513. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
40. Rockström, J.; Falkenmark, M.; Karlberg, L.; Hoff, H.; Rost, S.; Gerten, D. Future water availability for global food production. Water Resources Research 2009, 45(7), 1–16. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
41. Isaac, M.; van Vuuren, D.P. Modeling global residential sector energy demand for heating and air conditioning in the context of climate change. Energy Policy 2009, 37(2), 507–521. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
42. Cashin, P.; Mohaddes, K.; Raissi, M. Fair weather or foul? The macroeconomic effects of El Niño. Journal of International Economics 2017, 106, 37–54. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
43. Krueger, P.; Sautner, Z.; Starks, L.T. The importance of climate risks for institutional investors. Re-view of Financial Studies 2020, 33(3), 1067–1111. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
44. Bolton, P.; Kacperczyk, M. Do investors care about carbon risk? Journal of Financial Economics 2021, 142(2), 517–549. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
45. IPCC. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2021. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
46. Diffenbaugh, N.S.; Burke, M. Global warming has increased global economic inequality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2019, 116(20), 9808–9813. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
47. Porter, M.E.; van der Linde, C. Toward a new conception of the environment-competitiveness rela-tionship. Journal of Economic Perspectives 1995, 9(4), 97–118. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
48. Stern, N. The economics of climate change. American Economic Review 2008, 98(2), 1–37. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
49. Friede, G.; Busch, T.; Bassen, A. ESG and financial performance: Aggregated evidence from more than 2000 empirical studies. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment 2015, 5(4), 210–233. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
50. Brunnermeier, M.K.; Nagel, S. Hedge funds and the technology bubble. Journal of Finance 2004, 59(5), 2013–2040. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
51. Burke, M.; Hsiang, S.M.; Miguel, E. Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production. Nature 2015, 527(7577), 235–239. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
52. Hallegatte, S.; Rentschler, J.; Rozenberg, J. Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity; World Bank Publications: Washington, DC, USA, 2019. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
53. Nordhaus, W.D. Climate change: The ultimate challenge for economics. American Economic Review 2019, 109(6), 1991–2014. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
54. OECD. Climate Adaptation and Economic Resilience in Emerging Economies; OECD Publishing: Paris, France, 2023. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]
Metrics
Views & Downloads
Similar Articles
- Methane Emissions from Municipal Solid Waste - Case Study in Cai Rang District, Can Tho City, Vietnam
- Youth Activism, Intentional Integration of Policies to Raise Awareness on Climate Change Action among the Youth
- Breathing Spaces: Environmental & User Experience in Dhanmondi and Zigatola Multistoried Apartments, Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Effects of Solid Waste Disposal on Soil Quality in Makurdi Metropolis, Benue State, Nigeria
- Environmental Impact of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Borgu Local Government Area