Patralekha Chatterjee | As India gets hotter, it's time to act 'hyper-local'

The heat is on. It is going to get a lot worse. And not just in poll-bound Karnataka.

This week, the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority warned of heatwave-like conditions in 27 mandals (a mandal is a cluster of 20 to 25 villages). In Delhi, the temperature is steadily rising. In Ahmedabad, the maximum temperature rose above 40 degrees this week. There will be a steady and gradual rise in maximum temperature by 3-5 degrees Celsius over most parts of the country during the next few days, says the India Meteorological Department.

We know that climate change is making heat waves hotter, and more frequent. But what is not adequately understood is that the risks due to extreme heat are not uniformly spread. How vulnerable we are to extreme heat depends not only on where we are, but who we are, how we live and the nature of our work. What needs to be stressed in the public conversation is that while extreme heat affects everyone, it does not affect everyone equally. Health and economic costs vary from group to group even in the same city or village.

A 2019 report by the International Labour Organisation titled Working on a Warmer Planet — The Impact of Heat Stress on Labour Productivity and Decent Work noted that in South Asia, “the country most affected by heat stress is India, which lost 4.3 per cent of working hours in 1995 and is projected to lose 5.8 per cent of working hours in 2030. Moreover, because of its large population, India is in absolute terms expected to lose the equivalent of 34 million full-time jobs in 2030 as a result of heat stress. Although most of the impact in India will be felt in the agricultural sector, more and more working hours are expected to be lost in the construction sector, where heat stress affects both male and female workers”.

Clearly, there cannot be an oversimplified response to the problem. So, how prepared are we?

India has heat action plans (HAP). Ahmedabad came out with the first HAP in the country in 2013 — a direct fallout of a devastating heatwave in Ahmedabad in 2010 which killed 1,344 people. This spurred the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) to team up with experts in the India Institute of Public Health-Gandhinagar (IIPH-G) and the US Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) and develop a plan to deal with extreme heat.

Ten years down the line, there are many more heat action plans in the country. Many good practices, first tried out in Ahmedabad, are being replicated. Telangana, for example, has become the first state to introduce the “cool roof” policy 2023-2028.

In essence, a “cool roof” is one built from materials that retain less heat and stay cooler than traditional roofs by reflecting more sunlight. As experts point out, such roofs are prepared, covered, or coated with materials that have special characteristics that help roofs stay cooler all through the day and buildings more comfortable. Cool roofs are much cheaper and more environment-friendly than air conditioners. Last December, Dr Jitendra Singh, minister of state (independent charge) for earth sciences, told Parliament that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) are working with 23 states to develop Heat Action Plans.

But while India has come a long way since the first HAP, critical gaps remain in its response to extreme heat. One key issue is the lack of an adequate localised response to vulnerable groups. A recent study titled How Is India Adapting to Heatwaves? An Assessment of Heat Action Plans with Insights for Transformative Climate Action by Aditya Pillai and Tamanna Dalal of the Centre for Policy Research, a leading Indian think tank, flags this, and other lacunae. The authors analysed 37 heat action plans at the city (9), district (13) and state (15) levels across 18 states. Most of the HAPs, they say, are not built for local context and have an oversimplified view of the hazard. “HAPs generally focus on dry extreme heat; only ten out of 37 HAPs reviewed seem to establish locally-defined temperature thresholds though it is unclear whether they take local risk multipliers (such as humidity, hot nights, duration of continuous heat among others) into account to declare a heatwave. Hot nights, heatwaves coming earlier, and cascading impacts are unevenly considered across HAPs,” the report notes. Additionally, “climate projections, which could help identify future planning needs, are not integrated into current HAPs”.

What leaps out in the report is one key statistic relating to groups most vulnerable to the extreme heat. The authors say that nearly all HAPs are poor at identifying and targeting vulnerable groups. “Only two of 37 HAPs explicitly carry out and present vulnerability assessments.”

The report goes on to say that in all 37 HAPs reviewed, vulnerability is primarily understood through the health implications of heat. All but four HAPs (unclear in a further five) explicitly identify the elderly, children, pregnant and lactating women, those with cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, and people with physical disabilities as being vulnerable to heat-related illness This has policy implications, the authors point out, because the local authorities tasked to implement the HAP would not have accurate and actionable information on where to direct their scarce resources and this could lead to poor targeting.

It is not that HAPs have not factored in the vulnerable groups but as the authors point out, “the list of solutions they propose do not necessarily focus on these groups”.

Significantly, HAPs are also underfunded. Only 11 of 37 HAPs discuss funding sources, says the CPR report. Of these, eight asked implementing departments to self-allocate resources, indicating a serious funding constraint, it noted.

The public discussion on heat waves typically focuses on cities. Arguably, urban India, with its asphalt, concrete, high density of buildings, is brutally impacted. But villages are where most Indians still live. India needs to have a localised rural response to extreme heat. Many researchers have pointed out that in parts of the country such as Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, it is hotter inside the tin-roofed houses at peak heat times than outside. Official advisories must factor this in.

Some good work has already started. For example, Watershed Organisation Trust, an NGO, in collaboration with the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), piloted the delivery of heat-health advisories via SMS to farmers in rural Jalna district of Maharashtra during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The bottomline: in a hotter world, India urgently needs hyper-local heat action plans based on granular heat vulnerability assessment.