Research area: Adaptation and Resilience
What is the Health Agenda for Climate Adaptation?
When Mangroves Do What Seawalls Cannot
Heat Action Plans: A Cautionary Note and a Way Forward
Introduction
Heat extremes have given rise to a new tool in public policy: the heat action plan. They define when and how the state should react to extreme heat and feature a script of actions that stretch across the breadth of government machinery. They are ambitious in scope, linking science, early warning systems, emergency aid, infrastructure change and coordinating institutions together.
Reviews of heat plans in democracies across the world suggest that they generally lack legislative or financial backing, which makes them less likely to be implemented. A recent analysis of the implementation of heat plans in India, a country recognised as an early mover in heat planning, showed that the plans focus on important short-term emergency responses to heat (such as on water stations or on the designation of public cooling), while falling short in the implementation of long-term structural changes such as increasing shade coverage, changing building codes, or preparing the grid for future cooling demand.
An important area of future research is to find how common this focus on the short-term is across developing countries, where larger shares of the population are heat-exposed, and state capacity is low. While the contents of heat action plans have been reviewed across regions, far fewer studies examine their implementation. Social scientists and policy researchers must offer closer inspections of their actual effects on historical rhythms of summertime governance.
This essay is part of the white paper, ‘Critical Perspectives on Extreme Heat in India’ by the Salata Institute’s Climate Adaptation in South Asia research cluster.
How Hot Is Too Hot?
Summary
Extreme heat is an increasingly regular feature of India’s climate, catalysing governments, public health agencies, and civil society to develop heat action plans (HAPs), policies, and emergency response measures to safeguard the public. Yet key questions remain unanswered about the thresholds that define dangerous heat and the evidence supporting interventions to mitigate its health impacts.
A central challenge in crafting any action plan or emergency response is deciding on its trigger point—the conditions above which exposure becomes hazardous and protective measures must be enacted. The most intuitive answer to the question “how hot is too hot?” is when conditions exceed the capabilities of human physiology. But this question cannot be answered without first asking, “too hot for what?” and also, “too hot for whom?” Even from a physiological perspective, these are difficult questions—and they become even more complex when translated into explicit triggers for HAPs, emergency responses, and other interventions.
A key barrier to deciding which interventions should be prioritised is a lack of data on their effectiveness, particularly in the Indian context. Even the establishment of robust evidence supporting the efficacy of an intervention does not guarantee that lives will be saved in the real world, as effectiveness can be compromised if the intervention comes with large economic costs. Identification and evaluation of solutions must therefore be heavily grounded in local context, to ensure feasibility and scalability in the long term.
This essay is part of the white paper, ‘Critical Perspectives on Extreme Heat in India’ by the Salata Institute’s Climate Adaptation in South Asia research cluster.
What is the Health Agenda for Climate Adaptation?
Introduction
Extreme heat poses the most direct and immediate threat to human health and well-being. Rising temperatures exacerbate infectious disease patterns, reduce agricultural productivity, and strain India’s already burdened health system. 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.
Accurately measuring the health impacts of heat is a central challenge in developing a credible climate health agenda. Building an evidence base will require local, contextually grounded research and improved epidemiological data. Timely and transparent communication of uncertainty must become a central norm in climate health modeling. Beyond scientific uncertainty, India’s ability to measure and respond to heat-health impacts is further constrained by fragmented data systems. Bridging these gaps requires both regulatory reform and a shift in mindset.
To be meaningful, the health agenda for climate adaptation must first center heat, the most pervasive and measurable stressor linking climate change and health. This essay is part of the white paper, ‘Critical Perspectives on Extreme Heat in India’ by the Salata Institute’s Climate Adaptation in South Asia research cluster.
Strengthening Coastal Resilience in India: A Multi-Hazard Approach to Adaptation Governance
Introduction
Coastal zones are the most productive and dynamic ecosystems on earth, supporting extensive economic activity, natural resources, and livelihoods. However, climate change is increasingly placing pressure on these regions through multiple interacting coastal hazards, such as sea-level rise (SLR), cyclones, storm surges, floods, and erosion. India, with an extensive coastline of approximately 11,098 km, stretching across nine states and four union territories, hosts rich marine biodiversity, diverse ecosystems, and more than 250 million people within 50 km of the shoreline. This coastline is vital to both the national and state economies, as these ecosystems underpin local livelihoods, industries, and development projects, making climate impacts on the coast particularly consequential for human well-being and economic stability.
Recent studies indicate that India’s coastal regions are experiencing accelerating trends in climate-related hazards. Observed changes include relative SLR along both the east and west coasts, increasing frequency and intensity of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, more frequent coastal flooding and erosion, and growing saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers and agricultural lands. These climate-driven hazards, together with non-climatic pressures such as coastal development, population growth, subsidence, and shoreline modification, are collectively transforming India’s coastal regions into high-risk zones and exacerbating existing social and ecological vulnerabilities.
Managing the complex risks emerging from these hazards depends critically on how coastal governance is structured. Over the past decade, India has taken important steps to assess climate vulnerability and develop adaptation measures for coastal regions through initiatives such as the National Coastal Mission (NCM) under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), and vulnerability assessments supported by the National Centre for Coastal Research. However, vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning remain focused on single hazards and are often implemented in silos. This fragmented approach overlooks the cascading and compounding nature of coastal hazards and limits the effectiveness of risk mitigation.
A significant body of literature shows that interactions between acute coastal hazards, such as cyclones and storm surges, and chronic coastal hazards, such as SLR, amplify impacts across social and ecological systems. Hence, continued reliance on single-hazard planning can result in blind spots and maladaptation.
In this issue brief, we highlight why strengthening coastal resilience in India requires moving beyond single-hazard planning and adopting an integrated understanding of interacting coastal hazards. We do this in 3 parts:
– First, by outlining key coastal hazards, their interactions, and emerging trends.
– Second, by examining India’s coastal governance landscape and its limitations;
– and finally, by proposing a shift toward a multi-hazard, systems-based approach to strengthen long-term resilience.
