New Regional Initiative Strives to Advance Heat Adaptation Across South Asia

South Asia is at the absolute epicenter of the global climate emergency. The subcontinent is warming at twice the global rate, and between 1990 and 2021, it suffered more than half of all heat-related deaths worldwide. By 2030, a staggering 90 percent of South Asia’s population is projected to face extreme heat exposure.

In India alone, CEEW research shows that 57 percent of districts—home to nearly three-quarters of the country's population—already face high to very high heat risk. Residents are facing an insidious combination of rising nighttime temperatures and stifling humidity. When the nights don't cool down, the human body cannot recover from daytime heat stress, placing an unprecedented structural strain on our health-care systems. Critically, the crisis crosses national borders. Bangladesh has seen its “felt temperatures” surge by 4.5 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) across four decades, while parts of even the high-altitude Himalayan regions of Bhutan and Nepal, known for frigid mountainous regions, now routinely cross the 40-degree Celsius (104-degree Fahrenheit) threshold. Despite these warnings, regional policy has remained fragmented, lacking the coordinated, health-triggered warning systems required to save lives.

At NRDC, our commitment to working with city and state administrations and local partners in India to help protect communities from extreme heat spans more than a decade. Alongside the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar (IIPHG) and community partners, we helped to pioneer South Asia's very first Heat Action Plan (HAP) in Ahmedabad following a devastating heat wave in 2010. Our peer-reviewed research shows that the plan has successfully avoided an estimated 1,190 deaths each year since it was first launched in 2013. Over the years, that single local pilot expanded into a national blueprint, helping city and state governments across India build resilience. 

But our work did not stop at improving heat early warning systems. We focused heavily on actionable, climate-friendly adaptation strategies like cool roofs, which help to reflect incoming solar radiation and reduce the accumulation of heat inside buildings. In an interdisciplinary modeling study in Ahmedabad, our team explored the near-term benefits of wider cool roof deployment by 2030. We found that expanding cool roofs to cover 20 percent of available building area (from a baseline of 5 percent) could drastically reduce cooling energy demand at the city level, completely offsetting the additional cooling demand triggered by climate change itself. The science shows that cool roofs offer a solution that advances goals for both mitigation (reducing climate pollution emissions) and adaptation (improving preparedness for climate hazards like extreme heat), delivering other benefits like improved air quality and health outcomes in the process.

But heat adaptation action cannot stop at city borders. More than 60 percent of India’s population lives in rural areas, where residents endure severe heat but lack the resources to adapt. Through the Hariyali Gram (Green Village) initiative in Gujarat, launched with the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), NRDC has brought cool roofs and clean energy directly to rural households, proving that localized, passive cooling significantly improves indoor thermal comfort and safeguards health.

The new GHHIN South Asia hub is built to scale these exact types of interventions across borders. By pairing up with world-renowned government scientists at the India Meteorological Department and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, the hub will directly bridge the gap between meteorological forecasting and public health responses, with projects spanning four critical pillars:

• Building a regional network: Unifying climate, urban planning, and health professionals across borders to share skills and coordinate regional heat actions
• Translating science into policy: Equipping local governments with pilot projects and pre– and post–heat season briefings to move from data points to lifesaving actions
• Strengthening early warnings: Ensuring heat alerts are tied directly to public health triggers and recommendations and addressing the unique needs of outdoor workers, students, newborns, and hospitalized patients
• Scaling what works: Documenting localized frontline successes—like cool roofs and modified work hours during especially hot days—and feeding them into global knowledge platforms

Over the next few years, the hub aims to bring together more than 60 institutions, train more than 500 professionals, and strengthen heat action plans throughout South Asia.

The launch of this hub is a profound validation of the heat adaptation work that NRDC and our partners have championed for years. True climate resilience means protecting the most vulnerable among us—the construction worker on a blazing afternoon, the rural family living under a heat-trapping tin roof, and the elderly dealing with chronic illnesses that can make heat exposure even more risky. We have more science and data than ever before about this problem, and we also have proven strategies to counter the intensifying heat threat. With the GHHIN South Asia hub, NRDC is helping to build the regional momentum needed to convert those lessons into swift, life-saving health actions across the region.