On 28 May, the mercury nearly touched 50℃ in the suburbs of Delhi. The severe heat-wave conditions have raised the literally and metaphorically burning issue of our cities getting hotter every year. Bushra Afreen, the Chief Heat Officer of Dhaka North, noted, “Heat is affecting everything, whether it’s infrastructure or education or health … it’s just everywhere.” A study conducted by researchers at IIT Bhubaneswar indicates that up to 60 per cent of the additional warming in Indian cities can be attributed to rapid urbanisation. This was observed by comparing the warming trends of rural and urban areas in India. This meteorological event is not an anomaly, as presupposed by the IIT Bhubaneswar report, but a prognosis of global warming, calling for immediate organised action. Urban cities need logistical and bureaucratic changes to combat the rising heat, and this requires urgent action.
Given the imminent and gargantuan nature of the challenge, this article draws from expert analyses to propose certain solutions that can be applied to urban cities, especially in the Global South. Implementation of heat action plans, appointment of chief heat officers and support staff, leveraging the bureaucratic structure of municipalities to create awareness, and efficient stakeholder management are some of the possible steps that can be taken to manage the rising heat in cities. These solutions involve a structural overhaul of existing inequitable systems and thus require a dynamic discourse.
Impact on marginalised communities
The unprecedented heat in South Asian cities disproportionately affects the inhabitants of a region that is already marred by poverty, hunger and deplorable civil rights. Rising temperatures impact various aspects of daily life and exacerbate existing inequities, creating multidimensional challenges for marginalised communities. Increased temperatures can lead to heatstroke, a medical emergency with a high case-fatality rate, and worsen other chronic health conditions. It also hinders productivity in sectors that require outdoor labour, such as agriculture and construction, leading to livelihood losses. Extreme heat affects school attendance and performance, as children struggle to concentrate or even attend classes. Additionally, the urban heat island effect makes cities hotter than rural areas, leading to increased emergencies, with greater incidence in areas with higher population levels and degraded living conditions. A report by Climate Rights International has asserted that rising temperatures have caused a human rights crisis, necessitating identifiable action plans from all stakeholders, both government and private actors. The report also highlighted the urban island heat effect, noting data from 13,000 cities worldwide show that urban heat exposure has increased by nearly 200 per cent between 1983 and 2016.
In a dialogue organised by Transitions Research on policy and heat adaptation plans for addressing uneven heat impacts in urban communities, Aditya Valiathan Pillai from Sustainable Futures Collective said, “Seventy-five per cent of the working population in India is exposed to heat. Increasing urban migration and weaker social security net in India and other parts of the Global South heighten these workers’ vulnerability to extreme heat.” This vulnerability is further compounded by cultural perceptions, as noted by Bushra Afreen, who works to combat extreme heat in Dhaka North. She observed, “There is a cognitive dissonance with respect to climate action, as the cultural values of people in the Global South include living with all types of climates. They do not appreciate experts trying to alter their style of life to make it more sustainable, as they potentially see it as an encroachment on their culture.” Therefore, solutions to the problem of extreme heat cannot be mathematical; these adaptation plans must be mindful and inclusive of the cultural and socio-economic factors at play in the Global South.
Lack of awareness of the issue is a direct consequence of the inadequacy or even absence of local governance on matters regarding climate change. Pillai elaborated on this: “We’ve decided to tackle local governance capacity. And, in our conversation with local government officials across the country, we found two things: one is that there’s relatively low levels of awareness, and two, there’s very little money in the system, so they don’t know what the problem is, they don’t know what the solutions are, and they don’t have money to tackle it.”
Addressing cultural and socio-economic factors, community-based efforts and insurance solutions
The purpose of identifying an issue is to develop solutions to address the associated challenge. In recent years, hotter cities in South Asia have prompted various innovative mitigation attempts. One such solution is the concept of a Chief Heat Officer (CHO), an idea conceptualised and organised by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre. The first CHO was appointed for Florida’s Miami-Dade County in April 2021. Currently, there are eight heat officers in different cities around the world tasked with helping vulnerable communities deal with increasing heat.
These heat officers have developed and implemented various strategies tailored to their specific regions. For instance, Bushra Afreen, the CHO of Dhaka North, has been raising awareness about small steps that people can take to protect themselves from extreme heat and advising on the best types of trees to plant for optimum shade. Sharing her experience as a CHO, Bushra noted that “last year, when I visited these communities, there was a lot of anger in the community. They were complaining about not being able to sleep during the night due to heat. There’s a lack of data in these places. No one knows how many people have died due to heat. Comorbidity studies … have not taken place in these areas during extreme heat.” Apart from identifying these issues, she has also been coordinating with the local municipality to install cooling zones in Dhaka and create safety crossings for children walking to and from the school in the heat.
In addition to these community-based efforts, another way of assisting the residents vulnerable to rising temperatures is through insurance and the mobilisation of private-sector financing. Owen Gow, Deputy Director at Atlantic Council, explained, “Premium support from the private sector is possible if commercial margins can be realised in the product being offered, be it heat insurance or climate hazard insurance.” This perspective has been widely echoed among the experts who have called for the mobilisation of CSR funds from the private sector for combating heat. Supporting Gow’s notion of getting the private sector interested in heat action funding as he stated, Pillai added: “One can start marketing heat-resilient buildings with low energy costs and high energy efficiency, and that can happen just through market dynamics. The electricity sector could actually also get investments to improve heat resilience because these outages aren’t helping anyone politically or financially.”
On the subject of getting assistance from international development banks, Gow argued: “Over the last few years, with the [number] of heat-related crises, we’ve seen a change in conversation around regional and multilateral development banks. We’re starting to see some really great work from the Asian Development Bank on this in South Asia. We’re starting to see other conversations from the World Bank on this topic.”
Lastly, heat action plans (HAPs) are being proposed as an instrument for organised efforts to control rising temperatures. As Pillai says, “HAPs are made to be implemented by the existing bureaucratic structure of the country in the same way a disaster management plan is implemented. However, such plans present the issue of ‘multi-departmental coordination’, which is problematic due to conveying and monitoring with multiple nodal agencies and resulting in bureaucratic inertia.” Therefore, environmental governance needs to evolve in such a way that heat issues can be acted on without hassles by a single agency using a definitive HAP.
Integrating multifaceted solutions
In view of the issues and solutions discussed above, it is clear that the issue of rising temperatures in urban areas, particularly in the Global South, is extremely critical and requires comprehensive strategies from all levels of stakeholders. This includes the implementation of HAPs, the appointment of CHOs, and the leveraging of municipal structures to increase awareness and manage stakeholders effectively. Challenges such as the disproportionate impact on marginalised communities and people’s cultural resistance to change must be addressed with inclusive, culturally sensitive approaches. Additionally, mobilising private sector funds for climate insurance and ensuring coordinated, efficient governmental responses is crucial. By integrating these multifaceted solutions, cities can better adapt to increasing heat and safeguard the health and livelihoods of their inhabitants, fostering resilience against the escalating impacts of global warming.
