We can’t air-condition our way out of global heating problem: UN heat officer

In 2022, the two organisations announced a collaboration and created this position to mainstream heat response and resilience-building actions in cities worldwide

In 2023, atmospheric heat crossed some of its critical thresholds even as countries continued to grapple with fundamental questions about its dangers. How do we measure extreme heat stress and its impact on human health and well-being, society, ecology and economy? How can we deal with the consequences it has for countries such as India that are already facing income, spatial, and resource inequalities?

Eleni Myrivili, the first global chief heat officer for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and senior advisor to the US-based Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre. (HT)

To understand the scale of the challenge, Hindustan Times spoke to Eleni Myrivili, the first global chief heat officer for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and senior advisor to the US-based Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre.

In 2022, the two organisations announced a collaboration and created this position to mainstream heat response and resilience-building actions in cities worldwide.

Myrivili has hands-on experience in this field, having previously served as Athens’s chief heat officer and the city’s deputy mayor for ‘urban nature, urban resilience, and climate adaptation.’ Edited excerpts from the interview:

Heat is a silent killer. It’s difficult to tell when and how it gets deadly, especially in warmer countries such as India where high temperatures are understood to be a normal seasonal occurrence. So how do we then assess the threat?

We know that the trends are becoming more intense and (moving) faster than we expected. Last year was the hottest year ever recorded. It broke a series of previous thresholds of extreme temperatures, including the surface of the ocean, and the hottest day ever. On November 17, the average temperatures around the globe were 2°C above (the pre-industrial levels). It was the first time that we broke the ceiling of two degrees (set in the 2015 Paris Agreement).

These are indications that we are dealing with temperatures that we didn’t expect that we would be dealing with at least so soon. We were hoping that we would accelerate our fossil fuel reductions and mitigation (of global warming), but we haven’t. The fact that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded coincides with the highest levels of emissions ever recorded as well.

We are heading towards a future that is going to be very much hotter and the risk is thus higher. In countries that have bigger cities with large populations living in extreme poverty and bad-quality housing, things are much harder. But we have to try to save lives.

India has been a frontrunner in this type of preparedness. Ahmedabad was one of the first cities that made a heat action plan and managed to significantly reduce mortality from heat waves. We have data for that. India already has a lot of experience (in dealing) with heat and there is awareness that extreme heat is dangerous.

Do you think there is an underestimation of heat-related mortalities?

We have problems with getting the right kind of data and methodologies for measuring heat-related mortalities. Apart from heat stroke or heat-related exhaustion, heat exacerbates pre-existing (medical) conditions. The symptomatology becomes pronounced and dire during extreme heat. We lose a lot of people because of heat but not directly. Since it is an indirect causality, it is often not recorded in hospitals. The death certificate does not say that this person died because there was a heat wave.

Now they (some authorities) are starting to measure (deaths) differently through comparison and elimination of other possibilities. So basically, looking at (death statistics) over many years during the same month based on the different temperatures… and then trying to figure out, by eliminating other types of deaths, the percentage rise in deaths because of heat.

For example, in the summer of 2022, the World Health Organisation, for the first time, announced heat as the main cause of death in Europe because of the intense heatwave. They were calculating between 15,000 and 20,000 deaths. In 2023, new research showed that the actual number of deaths linked to heat was over 61,000.

There is also an issue with how we measure heat. There are land surface temperatures, air temperatures, the heat index, the wet bulb... a lot of different measurements. We need to standardise it. We also need to standardise how we account for mortality and morbidity and ensure that governments collect these types of data.

Are there any attempts to standardise these methodologies?

The WHO together with the World Meteorological Organisation are trying to promote this type of standardisation. Also, Group on Earth Observations (an intergovernmental organisation) is creating a global heat resilience service that will provide knowledge and data to cities to help them figure out their heat risks and solutions. This is a new effort by the United Nations (supported by the UN’s ‘early warning for all initiative’)

As the global heat officer, what is your role in the UN?

I am trying to raise the agenda of heat within the UN and make sure that it is taken seriously. Climate funding is mostly for mitigation. But only 3% or less goes into adaptation and resilience building. A big part of my agenda is to figure out how to create the right kind of policies and funding mechanisms that cities can have access to.

I am not organically part of the UN-Habitat. It is the Arsht-Rock (Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation) Resilience Center that has seconded me to push this agenda forward.

The Arsht-Rock Center has been working with cities around the world. In India, they worked with SEWA, an association of three million self-employed women, to design heat risk reduction initiatives, which include parametric insurance (covers a pre-established amount paid instantly when a triggering event happens). This gives them the capacity to not go to work when the temperatures are high, without losing their wages. We’re piloting it. It needs to be tweaked.

Women are particularly vulnerable to heat. They work more hours than men and much of their work is unpaid. They end up suffering much more from heat because their bodies accumulate the heat from the day’s work, but also from working in the house. Apart from the insurance, distributing gloves so they don’t burn their hands, and cooling boxes so that the food they bring to work doesn’t go bad are basic things to do.

Is there a possibility of this initiative being scaled up because a large population of workers in urban areas don’t have the option of taking the “hot day” off? They live in poorly constructed homes in dense neighbourhoods that are heat islands where even a tree is a luxury.

We have to create regulatory frameworks from the central government that can protect and support the labourers, especially those in the agriculture and construction sector, in informal low-paying jobs, who are particularly exposed to deadly conditions. They are also the people who migrate to cities and live in the peripheries of the city in informal housing and need protection.

The public sector has to have a larger burden for this type of initiative, but it can’t shoulder the whole financial responsibility. So, we have to have the private sector backing. We also need regulatory and legal protections and policing of these (actions).

In the last couple of years, the International Labour Organization has been coming up with specific directives focussed on (extreme) heat. For example, you have to ensure that people are not allowed to work during specific hours or have them work during night hours, and make sure that there is compensation for the days when even the nights are too hot for people to work. The private sector has to realise that they cannot make people work in conditions that are dangerous to their health.

Those who are most vulnerable to extreme heat can’t afford cooling appliances. Those who can, overdo it. Increased use of ACs has a negative impact (it cools interiors but warms the outdoors), and pushes up power consumption, which in much of the world is produced in coal-fired plants responsible for emissions that cause global warming. How do we get out of this vicious circle?

We cannot air-condition our way out of this because ACs not only create more emissions, they also warm public spaces (with the hot air they emit) and when the outdoors is hot, we end up needing more (air-conditioning). It is an extremely egotistical way of dealing with the problem.

In an initiative led by the United Nations Environmental Program, which was brought to COP 28, about 70-80 governments around the world signed the Global Cooling Pledge. But India did not sign it.

The countries committed to lowering emissions that come out of using air conditioning will try to reduce cooling-related emissions by 68% from today by 2050, significantly increase access to sustainable cooling by 2030 and increase the global average efficiency of new air conditioners by 50%.

They also pledged to allow the production or import of highly energy-efficient air-conditioners, not depend on coal and fossil fuels (for generating power) and use more sustainable cooling methods to reduce the need for air conditioning.

These are important measures that we have to make sure that more and more countries abide by. We did it for the ozone (protocols to phase out ozone-depleting hydrochlorofluorocarbons used in refrigeration and air-conditioning) a few decades ago. Surely, we can do it again.

A study (by the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research) of heat action plans (HAPs) made by various cities in India showed that they are advisory and have no legal backing. They also lack local context and have no funds for action. Any suggestions on how these plans can be strengthened?

Solutions have to come from different levels of government. There has to be financial support to back the decisions. Even in Athens, it was a struggle to get a budget. These types of decisions must be from the top down and must have legal frameworks.

In India, where you don’t have very strong city leadership from what I understand, it has to come from the central government type of decision-making and mandate some financial support.

One of the main things that has been working in India is the early warning system. It can save lives. It has to be organised throughout Indian society – from cities to the tiniest of villages. Mechanisms that make sure that the right information reaches everybody.

The other thing, which has been tried in India only in a very small percentage (of homes), is a cool roof. There are new materials available that you whitewash to push the heat outwards. We have data to figure out which areas have the highest exposure to heat. We can target these (neighbourhoods) but this should be a nationwide programme.

The other measure is re-greening for which we have to figure out financial mechanisms, maybe carbon credits. These require generalised effort.