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.
Extreme heat in India needs funds to fix
Tamanna Dalal
India Development Review | 26 June 2024
The recent spate of deadly heatwaves highlights the need for long-term systemic solutions, which come with a hefty price tag. Here’s how India can foot the bill.
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Unified action needed to tackle extreme heat and air pollution
Annanya Mahajan and Tamanna Dalal
Mongabay | 25 June 2024
The combined impact of air pollution and heatwaves can be far more severe than individual impacts.
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Synergistic Impact of Air Pollution and Heat on Health and Economy in India
Abinaya Sekar, Rajat Sharma and Annanya Mahajan
Springer | 1 May 2024
The chapter examines the combined influence of heat and air pollution their implications for global health and the economy.
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Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Opinion: India is on the climate crisis front line. So why isn’t that an election issue?
Aditya Valiathan Pillai
CNN Opinion | 20 April 2024
Climate won’t be a major issue in India’s upcoming six-week-long national election, unlike in Australia, the UK, and US, where elections can hinge on climate policy positions. But it will shape Indian elections in definitive but under-the-radar ways.
SFC Perspectives
Adaptation and Resilience
Climate Policy
Energy Transitions
Environmental Governance and Policy
SFC Perspectives on Adaptation and Resilience, Climate Policy, Energy Transitions, and Environmental Governance and Policy
SFC
SFC | 19 March 2024
SFC Perspectives are intended to stimulate discussion by providing an overview of key issues and avenues for action to inform India’s sustainable development trajectory.
SFC Perspectives
Adaptation and Resilience
Perspectives on Adaptation and Resilience: Building systems that allow India to adapt to climate impacts
Aditya Valiathan Pillai and Tamanna Dalal
SFC | 18 March 2024
The scale and complexity of the climate challenge merits serious consideration of systemic change, and a re-examination of what is needed for economy and society to thrive in an era of frequent, and often ravaging, climate impacts.
Journal articles
Adaptation and Resilience
Environmental Governance and Policy
Impact of heatwaves on all-cause mortality in India: A comprehensive multi-city study
Jeroen de Bont, Amruta Nori-Sarma et al.
Environment International | 22 February 2024
The authors found strong evidence of heatwave impacts on daily mortality. Longer and more intense heatwaves were linked to an increased mortality risk, however, resulted in a lower burden of heatwave-related deaths.
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Himalayas: How Pattern Of Natural Disasters Leaves Locals In Cycle Of Construction And Destruction
Chetan Mahajan and Annanya Mahajan
Outlook | 11 September 2023
There is a pattern of natural disasters in the Himalayas, which leaves the local population caught in a cycle of construction and destruction.
Opinions
Adaptation and Resilience
Heatwaves will get worse. Invest in adapting now.
Aditya Valliathan Pillai and Satchit Balsari
Hindustan Times | 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
Cambridge University Press | 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
CarbonBrief | 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
Hindustan Times | 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
