Climate Adaptive Action Plans to Manage Heat Stress in Indian Cities

The frequency and intensity of heatwaves is expected to rise in the 21st Century. It affects human health and often results in physiological stress in people even triggering mortality. The worrisome part is that heat waves affect a large population in a short span of time that may create health issues and produce cascading socioeconomic impacts such as work loss and a decrease in labour productivity. To add to this, low heat-health risk awareness among the citizenry, preparedness of governance systems to respond to heat-related threats, and lack of policies to improve system preparedness are creating repercussions of health emergencies, wellbeing and economy of the cities.
The ongoing and exponential threats to the environment and the recent wake-up call in the 6th IPCC report on heating of Earth’s surface around 2.0 °F (1.1 °C) highlights that future global mean temperature and related heatwaves are only expected to increase. The world’s sevenwarmest years have all occurred since 2014, with 10 of the warmest years occurring since 2005 (NoAA, 2021).