India’s heatwaves need urgent climate action
India’s heatwaves need urgent climate action
After an extreme heatwave, Nilanjana Bhowmick suggests a number of ways of reducing the effects of climate change in India.
A couple of years ago, Noor Jehan was working at a construction site when she got a phone call. Her husband was a rickshaw puller. He was carrying a man and fainted in the hot sun and with an empty stomach. This was not the first time. ‘Throughout the summer, he faints again and again,’ she says. ‘Someone phones and then we go and get him.’
India is home to 1.4 billion people. It gets hotter every year and the poor suffer most. Many work in outdoor jobs, such as on construction sites, or are homeless and live in poor housing. They are very likely to suffer in the extreme heat.
For example, Jehan lives in a park in New Delhi with her family. Every day when she gets back from work, she fills a single use plastic bag with water and ties it along the iron railings to drink during the night. ‘Sometimes we sit right next to the road to catch a cool breeze as vehicles drive past,’ she says.
India now has a ‘Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Atlas’. It gives maps in districts of heatwaves, flooding, and weak areas. Twenty-three states also have Heat Action Plans including daily information on heatwaves, warnings, and advice to reduce the effects of heat. But so far they are not very successful.
Between March and June 2024, there were more than 40,000 cases of possible heatstroke in India. The media reported birds and bats falling from the sky, dehydrated from the heat. The International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology said that the Heat Action Plans of nine cities and five districts did not plan finance or resources for this. We need policies around how India experiences heatwaves, to find the populations most affected by rising temperatures, and building low cost, sustainable housing and cooling facilities.
We also need global action on climate change. After another heatwave in Asia and the Middle East in April 2024, scientists at the World Weather Attribution group said heatwaves were 45 times more likely in some parts of the continent because of climate change caused by humans. There is little doubt that India faces a serious challenge in providing both development and environmental sustainability. We think heatwaves will increase by six times by 2060. We will need more cooling facilities. The problem is that air conditioning and refrigeration cause around 10 per cent of global CO2 emissions.
India’s Cooling Action Plan from 2019 is to reduce the need for cooling by 20-25 per cent and refrigeration by 25-30 per cent by 2037. It suggests solutions like air-tight buildings, white-painted roofs, green roofs, and better city planning to reduce the effects of heat. This is a start. But most importantly we need to begin taking serious action on climate change and recognising that extreme heat is a national disaster.
NOW TRY THE ORIGINAL:
https://newint.org/climate/2024/indias-heatwaves-require-urgent-climate-action
(This article is in easier English so it is possible that we changed the words, the text structure, and the quotes.) [[Category:]