Council on Energy, Environment and Water Integrated | International | Independent
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recently warned that at least one of the next five years will break the temperature records set in 2024—the hottest year till now. Asia is warming at twice the global average. Meanwhile, a recent study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) revealed that over half of Indian districts, home to 75 per cent of the country’s population, are at high to very high heat risk. While an increasing number of heatwaves already lead to productivity loss, rising humidity combined with warmer nights puts more people at risk of heat-related illnesses.
The summer of 2025 might have seen fewer heatwave days, but all scientific evidence points in one direction: India must prepare for hotter days and nights. A big part of this preparedness is how we communicate heat and the risks it carries to people. The solutions need to resonate widely — centring lived experiences across demographic divides, be in accessible language, and show shared ownership. This is especially true for heat resilience, where the effectiveness of solutions often depends on how well they are communicated, understood, and adopted at the community level.
The challenge is as much about infrastructure as it is about enabling people to act on timely, relatable information. Currently, only ~30 per cent of Indian households can afford either air conditioners or coolers. Outdoor workers, contributing to three quarters of the workforce, and people living in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, the elderly, infants, children, women, and individuals with disabilities are among the most vulnerable. Affordable and scalable solutions are essential to ensure that no one is left behind in building heat resilience. In 2024, India notified heat waves nationally as disasters, enabling access to disaster mitigation funds. Many states have followed by identifying heat waves as state-specific disasters.
Several states have also started developing Heat Action Plans (HAPs) at city, district and even local levels. These have been instrumental in mapping heat risk hotspots and launching affordable, scalable solutions tailored to local needs – from cooling shelters in Jodhpur to UV alert systems in Kerala.
To bring such underrepresented interventions into mainstream conversations, CEEW launched a five-part video series – India’s Heatwave Heroes: Local Solutions in a Hotter World – partnering with popular national and regional social media influencers and YouTubers. These include Ashish Vidyarthi, Ashraf Excel, Aliva Mishra (Lui’s Good Life), Shakti Singh (Traveling Mondays), Shweta Rathore (wittySpace) who all explored how India tackles heat. They met the people and the places rising to the challenge and highlighted innovative, low-cost solutions.
The videos are now available via the influencers’ respective YouTube channels. Watch here.
By taking the message to diverse audiences in formats they already engage with, the series highlights how citizen-centric communication can scale awareness and adoption.
In addition to identifying heatwaves as a state-specific disaster, the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) added sunstroke and sunburns to the list in 2019. In a first for India, the state integrated an Ultraviolet Index (UVI) into its microclimate monitoring and disaster preparedness strategy to ensure those at higher risk were equipped with the necessary information to minimise exposure.
In collaboration with UNDP and the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), KSDMA installed UV radiometers and sensors in all 14 districts. These collect UV data every 15 minutes and update a public dashboard. Daily UV and temperature alerts are issued via social media, and also shared with district authorities, media, and other stakeholders through WhatsApp groups. Timely alerts help residents make informed choices about outdoor exposure, especially during peak heat hours.
Regional creator and travel explorer Ashraf Excel spoke with outdoor workers, street vendors and the public in Thiruvananthapuram to understand how Kerala copes with extreme heat and humidity in the coastal city. He also visited the KSDMA headquarters to see these measures in action.
After a deadly 2010 heatwave, Ahmedabad became the first city in South Asia to launch a Heat Action Plan in 2013. As temperatures rose further in the last decade, the city has turned to several innovative solutions to safeguard lives and livelihoods. Recently, local grassroots organisations, including the Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) and Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), have launched Parametric Heat Insurance schemes to compensate women in the informal sector for loss of wages during extremely hot days.
The data‑driven model uses real‑time temperature monitoring to trigger automatic payouts when the maximum temperature crosses certain predefined thresholds. For instance, the MHT scheme charges an affordable annual premium of INR 354 and subscribers receive payouts ranging INR 750 - INR 1,250 depending on the temperature thresholds activated. This provides a safety net for those who have to otherwise expose themselves to extreme heat to earn a living. Parametric insurance can be a critical tool in climate-proofing wages even during other extreme weather events like floods and cyclones.
Veteran Indian actor and popular food vlogger Ashish Vidyarthi was back in Ahmedabad to revisit some of his favourite eating joints. But this time, he also wanted to explore how the city adapted to the rising heat and the citizen-centric solutions on offer.
As one of India’s most climate-vulnerable states, Odisha is combating extreme heat with a simple yet effective solution. The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) launched a state-level Heat Action Plan in 2022, which proposes installing cool roofs in urban areas to adapt to extreme temperatures.
Cool roof technologies, the simplest of which is applying solar-reflective white paint on the roof, reduce the absorption of heat and bring down indoor temperature by 2-4°C. This translates to electricity bill savings and improved comfort during hours of peak temperature, especially for home-based livelihoods and women. In Bhubaneswar, organisations like the MHT have been training women from low-income households to apply low-cost solar-reflective paints and thermocol ceilings on roofs. For households without ACs, cool roofs can mean a better night’s rest in summer. As a rapidly expanding Tier 2 city where concrete and asphalt are trapping heat and driving up local temperatures — a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect — these cool roof solutions offer an affordable and effective way to make neighbourhoods in Bhubaneshwar more livable.
During a family visit to Bhubaneswar, popular Odia lifestyle influencer Aliva Mishra went in search of practical and affordable cooling solutions on a hot day. It led her to an urban slum in the city, where she observed how residents benefited from a simple but effective cool roofing solutions:
In April 2024, Jodhpur Nagar Nigam North (JNNN) and MHT, supported by the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), launched a net-zero cooling station as part of the city’s Heat Action Plan. The first was in Kabir Nagar, followed by another in Magra Punjala in June 2025.
The Net-zero cooling shelter can accommodate around 40 people, making it a powerful community cooling mechanism. Picture credits: Vidusshi Pathak
These localities are key heat-vulnerable areas identified under the Heat Action Plan. The stations combine passive cooling (wind towers, vetiver curtains, misting fans) with solar power and reflective roofing. They provide drinking water, ORS, and first aid, offering refuge for outdoor workers and daily wage earners, who have limited access to air-conditioned spaces. By integrating passive cooling techniques, renewable energy, and traditional architectural elements, the facility serves as a model for scalable urban community cooling infrastructure.
Rajasthani creator Shakti Singh Shekhawat spent a day exploring traditional and modern cooling methods, finding the new stations especially effective in heat-vulnerable areas:
In response to the escalating threat of extreme heat in Delhi and with a large vulnerable urban population, several hospitals in Delhi, including Ram Manohar Lohia, Safdarjung Hospital and All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), launched specialised heatstroke emergency treatment facilities. The Delhi Heat Action Plan 2025 also highlights the significance of such medical facilities to treat heat-related illnesses. The heatstroke units are equipped with immersion tubs, ice-making refrigerators, rectal thermometers, ventilator beds and additional inflatable cooling tubs.
A specialised team of doctors, senior residents and nurses are deployed in the event of a heatwave, along with other amenities like a dedicated helpline number and special ambulance services. These units can be life-saving for those who suffer heat strokes and other health risks emanating from heat exhaustion.
Creator Shweta Rathore left Delhi for the hills last year because she couldn’t bear the heat. Now, she returns to the city, curious to know how it is adapting. She also visited an emergency heatstroke treatment unit in one of the city’s largest hospitals:
The solutions in Kerala, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, and Delhi show that protecting people from extreme heat is not just about infrastructure or technology — it is about reaching the right people, in the right way, at the right time. By combining local innovation, targeted policy action, and inclusive communication, cities are building trust, reducing risk, and inspiring replication.
For CEEW, these are not isolated interventions but part of a broader climate communication imperative: connecting lived experiences to policy narratives, ensuring solutions are accessible and relatable, and creating pathways for citizens to see themselves as active participants in climate action. When governments, communities, civil society, and communicators work together, we not only cool our cities — we warm the public will needed to accelerate resilience at scale.
Shruthi Chikkuraj Pillai is a Programme Communications Consultant and Milan George Jacob is a Senior Programme Communications Specialist at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). Send your comments to shruthi.pillai@ceew.in.
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