By Amarendu Nandy & Aayush Anand

A spate of extreme weather events like devastation from Hurricane Milton in the United States or those closer home in Kerala, Assam, and North India underscores the growing frequency and severity of climate-related disasters, and highlights the urgent need for robust climate risk management, both globally and domestically. According to the Global Climate Risk Index, India is the seventh most vulnerable country to climate change worldwide.

In this context, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s recent initiative of the Climate Risk Information System (RB-CRIS) can be viewed as a significant and timely step. The initiative addresses a fundamental challenge in climate risk management — the lack of standardised, high-quality data. The fragmented nature of climate information has long been a stumbling block for financial institutions in quantifying their exposure to climate risks. RB-CRIS seeks to bridge this gap by providing a centralised repository of processed, standardised climate data that could help integrate such risks into financial supervision and macroprudential policy.

RB-CRIS shall comprise two components — first, a publicly accessible web-based directory of data sources, including meteorological and geospatial information that will benefit not only regulated entities but also other stakeholders, including the public; and second, a portal of processed data sets in standardised formats for regulated entities that shall equip financial institutions with the tools necessary to conduct thorough........

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