Books and book chapters

Adaptation and Resilience

At present, heat action plans are written to be comprehensive rather than implementable. A focus on incentives and implementation—while remaining uncompromising on the determination of thresholds, vulnerability assessments and the specificity of solutions—is a productive way forward. We are yet to see plans that manage this balancing act. An example of how to solve this dilemma could help speed the rollout of heat protections as the climate warms.

Books and book chapters

Adaptation and Resilience

Key questions remain unanswered about the thresholds that define dangerous heat and the evidence supporting interventions to mitigate its health impacts. These underscore the need to build evidence-based and contextually grounded protections for India and the rest of the world. This requires expanding beyond laboratory studies and models to include community-informed research linking physiological and epidemiological data with the lived realities of those at greatest risk.

Books and book chapters

Adaptation and Resilience

Without urgent investments in adaptation, escalating heat and climate impacts will outpace the capacity of India’s health infrastructure and workforce, deepening inequities across regions and populations. To frame a credible health agenda for climate adaptation, we first need to understand the limits of what we know, and why our data systems fail to capture the true scale of climate-related health impacts.

Issue Briefs

Adaptation and Resilience

Interactions between acute coastal hazards such as cyclones and storm surges, and chronic coastal hazards such as sea-level rise, amplify impacts across social and ecological systems. A continued reliance on single-hazard planning can result in blind spots and maladaptation. We explore why strengthening coastal resilience in India requires moving beyond this reliance and adopting a multi-hazard approach to adaptation that integrates our understanding of interacting coastal hazards.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Forest finance remains low, largely dependent on public funds, and flowing mainly to richer countries, even as deforestation pressures are highest in tropical regions. Brazil has proposed a new forest financing mechanism, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which aims to support standing natural forests for climate mitigation, an approach different from existing mechanisms. However, without addressing equity, weak monitoring systems, and outdated forest definitions, the initiative may fall short of delivering meaningful change.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Silpa Satheesh’s book, ‘Labour, Nature, and Capitalism: Exploring Labour – Environmental Conflicts in Kerala, India’ makes a significant contribution to understanding how environmental conflicts unfold in contexts marked by economic precarity and institutional complicity. It offers a nuanced perspective from the Global South on how material interests, ideological alignments, institutional power, and contested understandings of nature shape ecological struggles.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

To respond effectively to extreme heat, we need to stop depicting it as an abstract or invisible threat. Here are tools for practitioners and communicators to visually convey its true scale and interconnected impacts.

Blogs

Adaptation and Resilience

Heatwaves are now one of India’s deadliest natural hazards, yet their true impact is frequently masked by bureaucratic oversight and a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat. This piece delves into why extreme heat remains misplaced in Indian governance, and argues for a paradigm shift to safeguard our future.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

The risks of the future are likely to be so severe, frequent and interconnected that they will require proactively identifying and tackling risk, girding the system for a state of permanent tumult, and relying on all-of-government coordination. The governance of extreme heat seems to be in that process of transition with commonly seen short-term actions across multiple departments, but limited preparation for the future.