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Is India Ready for a Warming World?

19 March 2025

How Heat Resilience Measures Are Being Implemented for 11% of India’s Urban Population in Some of Its Most At-Risk Cities

Aditya Valiathan Pillai, Tamanna Dalal, Ishan Kukreti, Alexandra Kassinis, Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, Escandita Tewari, Navroz K. Dubash

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Heatwaves are coming. Can India handle it?

The Indian Express | 25 March 2025

Aditya Valiathan Pillai, Tamanna Dalal, and Ishan Kukreti write in The Indian Express about our new report that assesses India’s preparedness for extreme heat.

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Why action on extreme heat in Indian cities is falling short

Carbon Brief | 19 March 2025

Adapting to increasing extreme heat will be central to urban living for decades to come. A late start to these efforts will increase pressure on the state in the future and risks exposing citizens to harms from warming that could be avoided

Aditya Valiathan Pillai, Tamanna Dalal, Ishan Kukreti et al

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Thirty and Still Dirty: Why Do Delhi’s Roads Remain So Polluted?

20 February 2025

This blog looks at some of the historical, emergent challenges behind vehicular emissions and explores how the city can be redesigned to serve its people and not its vehicles.

Arunesh Karkun & Nazneen

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Annual Report 2023-24: Building the Foundations for a Sustainable Future

Our team, highlights from the launch, our work across the four research areas, academic and policy engagements, and more

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Navigating pathways to a sustainable future by

Analysing issues at the frontier of addressing climate change, managing the energy transition, and limiting environmental threats in India and globally

Informing policymakers, stakeholders, and the public about key policy and governance levers, and their implications

Accelerating the transition to an environmentally and socially sustainable future by enabling strategic action for systemic change

Our areas
of work

Adaptation and Resilience

Building systems that allow India to adapt to multiple and increasingly severe climate impacts

Climate Policy

Mapping, strategising, and enabling a development-centric, climate-ready state

Energy Transitions

Rethinking the configuration of technology, politics, and institutions to build a 21st century energy system

Environmental Governance and Policy

Limiting the threat of environmental pollution through health-focused, systemic transformations

Our events

Upcoming

Book Discussion |‘More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy’

A discussion of the book, ‘More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy’ by the author Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a historian of science, technology and the environment, a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and a professor at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, with Elizabeth Chatterjee, Assistant Professor of Environmental History at the University of Chicago, and Ashwini K Swain, Fellow, SFC.

Monday

7 April, 2025

5:00 pm

Past Event

Climate Finance at COP 29: What New, Collective, Quantified Ambition?

A discussion on the state of play on climate finance negotiations going into COP 29, with Joe Thwaites (NRDC), Jonathan Beynon (CGD), and Avantika Goswami (CSE). Moderated by Aman Srivastava, Fellow, SFC

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Past Event

Launch Event: Introducing the Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC)

Featuring opening remarks by N.K. Singh, Chair, 15th Finance Commission and a panel discussion on ‘Building the foundations for a sustainable future’.

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View all events

Public engagement

| 19-22 March 2025

At ‘India 2047 Building a Climate-Resilient Future’, organised by the Lakshmi Mittal & Family South Asia Institute, the Salata Institute of Climate & Sustainability, Harvard University, and MOEFCC, Aditya Valiathan Pillai presented findings from SFC’s report on India’s preparedness for a 1.5°C world, the current status of heat-related actions on the ground, and climate modeling that highlighted cities most vulnerable to the impacts of heat in the coming years. He also moderated two panels– (i) Adaptation Frameworks and (ii) Centering Health and Livelihoods While Planning Adaptation Frameworks.

IN THE NEWS

What is lacking in India’s heat action plans?

The Indian Express | 27 March 2025

Our new report, which examines how heat resilience measures are being implemented in nine Indian cities, is featured in the Indian Express Explained section.

IN THE NEWS

Indian cities unprepared for deadly heatwaves, long-term fixes missing: Study

News Karnataka | 26 March 2025

Our new report ‘Is India Ready for a Warming World? How Heat Resilience Measures Are Being Implemented for 11% of India’s Urban Population in Some of Its Most At-Risk Cities’  covered in News Karnataka.

IN THE NEWS

देश मे गर्मी मे तपने वाले शहर ही बचाव के प्रति लापरवाह

Dainik Jagran | 24 March 2025

एसएफसी की नई रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, भारत के नौ प्रमुख शहर बढ़ती भीषण गर्मी से निपटने में कमजोर साबित हो रहे हैं। अल्पकालिक उपाय जैसे पानी की उपलब्धता और कार्य समय में बदलाव किए जाते हैं, लेकिन दीर्घकालिक समाधान या तो नदारद हैं या बेहद कमजोर हैं। गर्मी के प्रति सबसे संवेदनशील आबादी के लिए ठंडक सुनिश्चित करने, शहरी नियोजन में सुधार और बिजली आपूर्ति को मजबूत करने जैसे कदमों की भारी कमी है। सरकारी नीतियों और संस्थागत तालमेल की कमजोरियों के कारण दीर्घकालिक समाधान लागू नहीं हो पा रहे, जिससे भविष्य में मौतों और आर्थिक क्षति की आशंका बढ़ रही है। रिपोर्ट में सुझाव दिया गया है कि शहरों को तत्काल प्रभावी योजनाओं पर काम करना चाहिए। इस रिपोर्ट को दैनिक जागरण ने कवर किया है।