In a column in the Business Today Magazine, Prof. Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and faculty director of the Mittal Institute, highlights the challenges of extreme heat and how awareness, information, and experimentation are needed to address the problem.
He provides examples of initiatives that “provide a glimpse of what is possible when collaboration and ingenuity come together,” which includes the Mittal Institute’s collaboration with key institutions such as All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, the National Foundation for India, and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) to gather detailed data on heat, make data accessible and usable, and raise awareness on the dangers that heat poses to human health.
Prof. Khanna writes:
“Most funding is going towards climate mitigation-that is, preventing the worsening of climate change, primarily through arresting how much carbon we continue to spew into the atmosphere. While the world learns to live within its limited remaining carbon-budget, we also have to invest in climate adaptation, learning to live with the extreme weather that is already here.” […]
“While the world learns to live within its limited remaining carbon-budget, we also have to invest in climate adaptation, learning to live with the extreme weather that is already here.” – Prof. Tarun Khanna
“Catastrophic floods attract more media attention, but heat is omnipresent and probably causes greater excess morbidity and mortality. Since the body cannot cool through perspiration in humid environments, we also have to factor in humidity by examining so-called wet bulb temperature readings. Sustained exposure to wet bulb temperature readings, even quite a bit below ‘normal’ body temperature of 37° C, can cause excess heat retention, and ultimately organ damage.”
“This manifests not just in acute events like heat stroke, but in a chronic and gradual sapping of human possibility with huge economic and social costs. The ILO estimated $2.4 trillion in GDP losses in 2019, and reports that today 70% of the global workforce is exposed to heat at work.”
“Sadly, large swathes of the Indo-Gangetic plains endure extended periods when such heat stress is likely visited upon millions of Indians. Even with the advent of welcome cooling from the monsoon, often wet bulb temperatures remain high enough that heat stress isn’t easily alleviated even then.”
“Given the ubiquity and likely increasing severity of the heat problem, and the lack of easily accessed funding, I suggest a three-part approach to understand the progress we’ve made in India, and the distance left to go, in addressing it-awareness, information, and experimentation.”
Read the whole column, “How To Adapt To Extreme Heat,” below: