Aditya Valiathan Pillai
Visiting Fellow,
Adaptation and Resilience
CV
Aditya Valiathan Pillai is a Visiting Fellow at the Sustainable Futures Collaborative and a doctoral researcher at King’s College London. He studies policies and institutions that could help adapt to climate impacts, with a current focus on responding to the growing threat of extreme heat in the global south. His work is informed by ongoing work on climate governance, particularly on the different forms climate institutions for mitigation and adaptation take across countries and subnational entities. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Group on Heatwave Mitigation to the National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India, and an Associate at the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University. He was formerly a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and Coordinator of the Adaptation and Resilience group at the Sustainable Futures Collaborative, New Delhi. He has a master’s degree in international politics from Sciences Po, Paris.
Publications
Journal articles
Climate Policy
Energy Transitions
India’s pathway to net zero by 2070: status, challenges, and way forward
Vaibhav Chaturvedi, Arunabha Ghosh et al.
Environmental Research Letters | 22 October 2024
This collaborative article by experts from 24 Indian institutions explores India’s path to net zero by 2070 through 3 broad dimensions - ‘national and sub-national perspectives’, ‘sectoral and technological transitions’ and ‘enablers’. Aditya Valiathan Pillai wrote on climate institutions as a key enabler in the process. He examines how India has performed in building climate institutions, the challenges that lie in building them, and how we can create an effective institutional structure that differs from ones in countries that are past their emissions peak.
Books and book chapters
Climate Policy
Climate Change: Policy, Institutional, and Legal Framework
Navroz K Dubash, Aditya Valiathan Pillai et al
Oxford University Press | 23 July 2024
Transforming towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient society will require reimagining existing governance arrangements. This chapter in 'The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Natural Resources Law in India' documents how India’s policies, institutions, and legal structures have changed in response to climate change.
Opinions
Climate Policy
A law around low-carbon climate resilient development
Navroz K Dubash, Aditya Valiathan Pillai and Shibani Ghosh
The Hindu | 8 July 2024
Authors lay out an institutional vision for India’s climate law - knowledge-based ‘low-carbon development commission’; ‘climate cabinet’ to drive strategy; executive coordination body; and mechanisms for federal engagement.
Opinions
Climate Policy
Court on climate right and how India can enforce it
Navroz K Dubash, Shibani Ghosh and Aditya Valiathan Pillai
The Hindu | 1 July 2024
Because India is still developing, is highly vulnerable, and yet to build much of its infrastructure, what the country needs is a law that enables progress toward both low-carbon and climate resilient development.
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.
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.