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| Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K

A study on heatwave preparedness of nine Indian cities, including Delhi, has found out that long-term actions are rare and where such actions exist, they are poorly targeted. Also, all the nine cities focused on immediate responses to heatwaves.

Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC), a Delhi-based research organisation, which conducted the study, said that without effective long-term strategies, India is likely to see a higher number of heat-related deaths due to more frequent, intense, and prolonged heat waves in the coming years.

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The nine cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Faridabad, Gwalior, Kota, Ludhiana, Meerut, and Surat – together make up over 11% of India’s urban population according to the 2011 Census and are some of India’s most at-risk cities in terms of heat, according to the SFC.

For the analysis, the SFC conducted 88 interviews with city, district, and State government officials responsible for implementing heat actions in these nine cities, including representatives from disaster management, health, city planning, labour departments, as well as city and district administrators.

The report States that actions such as making household or occupational cooling available to people who are most heat-exposed or developing insurance cover for lost work etc. are missing in all the nine cities.

Aditya Valiathan Pillai, a visiting fellow at SFC and a co-author of the report, said that people from lower socio-economic class are more vulnerable to heat. “A construction worker or a delivery person works in extreme heat and will probably go back to a residential area such as a slum or an informal settlement, which is also hotter compared to a formal residential accommodation with cooling systems. It is a double whammy for them,” he said.

From the interviews with officials, the top issues they faced for taking action were coordination failures, competing priorities, and not seeing heat as a problem, as per the report.

The report has also made several recommendations including to strengthen Heat Action Plans (HAPs) in local governments as it could help institutionalise long-term actions and monitor their effectiveness. “A sustained, multi-year capacity-building effort aimed at those in charge of executing departmental actions at the city/district level, in India’s ten most heat-vulnerable cities could rapidly improve India’s heat resilience prospects,” the report said.

The report has also recommended a sustained capacity-building effort aimed at officials in charge of executing departmental actions at the city or district levels, in ten most heat-vulnerable cities as it could rapidly improve India’s heat resilience prospects. “We recommend creating permanent and funded specialist positions in the most climate-vulnerable districts, with training for long-term risk mitigation,” the report said.

“Many of the long-term risk reduction measures we focus on will take several years to mature. They must be implemented now, with urgency, to have a chance of preventing significant increases in mortality and economic damage in the coming decades,” Mr. Pillai said.