Thesis Title: Extreme heat governance in India: a comparative analysis of why some subnational governments do better than others
Abstract: Climate change is poised to inflict extreme heat on much of the world in the coming decades, leading to increased mortality and diminished economic productivity. This is a particularly acute challenge for countries in the Global South, which are at once hotter and have lower levels of state capacity to mitigate and deal with the consequences. While many countries and sub-national governments are developing ambitious, multi-sectoral heat action plans, these plans are inherently complex and difficult to implement. They require coordination within and across departments that push bureaucracies into uncomfortable new operational patterns, a deeply localised understanding of how heat interacts with society, and enough flexibility to allow for minute variation in response, sometimes at the level of adjacent neighbourhoods. Extreme heat and heatwaves force states to operate at levels of granularity and experimentation they are neither built for nor comfortable with.
This project aims to understand why some governments do better than others in designing and implementing these crucial heat plans. Specifically, it aims to build methods that help us see variations in state response across sub-national cases and then investigate the political and historical causes for these variations in performance. Findings could help governments across the world structure their heat governance institutions better, thereby saving lives and preserving economic vitality.
Primary Supervisor: Louise Tillin and George Adamson (co-supervisors)
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