India
#00181
Case study of
#00183 Create a funded municipal heat office with an annually updated heat action plan
Implementer
Indian state and city governments (over 100 heat action plans adopted across the country)
Location
Description
After Ahmedabad's 2013 Heat Action Plan showed peer-reviewed mortality benefits, over 100 Heat Action Plans (HAPs) proliferated across India by 2023, mostly copying the Ahmedabad document without its coalition, accountability structures, or budget. A Centre for Policy Research assessment of 37 HAPs (Pillai and Dalal 2023) found them underfunded, resting on weak legal foundations, poorly targeted at vulnerable groups, and non-transparent about implementation. A 2025 Sustainable Futures Collaborative study interviewing 88 officials across 9 cities found short-term emergency measures present but long-term mitigation largely absent. The structural cause: heat is not a notified disaster under Indian law, so no standard funding channel exists for HAP implementation. Ahmedabad's own funded, coalition-backed plan was evaluated at roughly 1,190 avoided deaths per year — demonstrating that the plan document is the cheapest and least important component.
Metrics
2Funding
Lessons learned
- Copying a successful city's plan document without its coalition and dedicated funding reproduces nothing of operational value.
- Making heat a notified disaster, or otherwise creating a statutory funding channel, is a precondition for plans becoming operations.
- Evaluate heat governance by budget lines, legal basis, and vulnerability targeting — not by the existence of a published plan document.
Documented Jul 24, 2026