SFC Perspectives Paper Building systems that allow India to adapt to multiple and increasingly severe climate impacts
India’s development hinges on managing a range of intensifying climate impacts: extreme heat, an eroding coastline, melting glaciers, and urban flooding, among others. These threats will impose upon the lives of an already vulnerable population by diminishing their incomes, increasing healthcare costs, and stifling intergenerational progress. We aim to help forestall these effects by improving governance systems that create and implement climate adaptation policies.
Our current research seeks to improve resilience to extreme heat and coastal erosion by identifying gaps in policy structures and local implementation. We work with sub-national partners to improve policy implementation. We study under-researched systemic levers such as how India’s federal structure can be improved to respond to growing climate impacts, integrating locally-relevant climate science into decision-making processes, and assessing the long-term social consequences of increasingly severe climate events.
Our publications
This also includes publications by SFC team members in their past capacities.
Opinion: India is on the climate crisis front line. So why isn’t that an election issue?
Aditya Valiathan Pillai
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SFC Perspectives on Adaptation and Resilience, Climate Policy, Energy Transitions, and Environmental Governance and Policy
SFC
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Perspectives on Adaptation and Resilience: Building systems that allow India to adapt to climate impacts
Aditya Valiathan Pillai and Tamanna Dalal
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Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Heatwaves will get worse. Invest in adapting now.
Aditya Valliathan Pillai and Satchit Balsari
20 May 2023
India’s recent heat deaths are not outliers. They signal a dismal future unless we start taking the urgent threat of heat seriously.
Books and book chapters
Adaptation and Resilience
Climate Governance and Federalism in India
Aditya Valiathan Pillai and Navroz K Dubash
11 May 2023
The chapter puts forward a synthetic account of the forces shaping climate governance in India’s federal architecture, building on descriptions of environmental federalism; state actions in climate policy; and several recent policy moves by both the Centre and states.
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
The gaps in India’s ‘heat action plans’
Aditya Valiathan Pillai
26 March 2023
The Indian government’s primary policy response to the life-threatening heat comes in the form of “heat action plans”. These plans urge a healthy mix of different solution types but most plans do not account for local context, are underfunded and are poor at identifying and targeting vulnerable groups.
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Forging a national consensus on climate adaptation is key
Aditya Valliathan Pillai
7 September 2022
Adaptation is best seen as a long-term anti-poverty measure whose policy relevance grows as the zone of climate vulnerability expands on the Indian map
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Karnataka’s crumbling coastline shows climate battles are political
Aditya Valiathan Pillai
30 March 2022
As the sea ravages coastal settlements, seawalls are springing up. But real solutions lie elsewhere, far away from the coast.
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
जलवायु संकट में भारत की संघीय प्रणाली की पुनर्कल्पना
Parth Bhatia, Navroz K Dubash et al.
15 March 2022
सभी देशों की तरह भारत के लिए भी, जलवायु परिवर्तन एक अत्यंत तेजी से बढती समस्या बन गई है। इस लेख के जरिये पिल्लई एवं अन्य तर्क देते हैं कि इस समस्या के समाधान के लिए भारत की संघीय प्रणाली की पुनर्कल्पना करने की आवश्यकता है, क्योंकि भारत के संविधान में जलवायु संबंधी कई क्षेत्रों में राज्यों के महत्वपूर्ण कर्त्तव्य निर्धारित किये गए हैं। वे जलवायु नीति में संस्थागत सुधार हेतु एक नए दृष्टिकोण का सुझाव देते हैं, जो राष्ट्रीय लक्ष्यों के लिए अपने कार्यों का समन्वय करते हुए राज्यों को पर्याप्त लचीलापन देगा।
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Reimagining Indian federalism in the climate crisis
Parth Bhatia, Navroz K Dubash et al.
7 February 2022
Addressing the issue of climate change requires reimagining Indian federalism, as the Indian Constitution gives states a crucial role in several arenas of climate action. The authors propose a new approach to institutional reform in climate policy, one that gives states adequate flexibility while coordinating their actions for national goals.
Journal articles
Adaptation and Resilience
Climate Policy
National climate institutions complement targets and policies
Navroz K Dubash, Aditya Valiathan Pillai et al.
4 November 2021
The paper suggests how countries can sequence the formation of climate institutions given the constraints of national politics and existing national political institutions.
Journal articles
Adaptation and Resilience
Climate Policy
Varieties of climate governance: the emergence and functioning of climate institutions
Navroz K Dubash
1 October 2021
How do states respond to the challenge of climate governance? Drawing on a collection of country studies, this paper outlines a framework to explain the path-dependent emergence of climate institutions.
