Each January, Ahmedabad’s skyline transforms into a sea of vibrant kites flown joyfully from rooftops — many crafted by skilled artisans like Fatima.

Fatima lives in the Danilimda neighborhood of Ahmedabad. In months leading up to the kite-flying festival of Uttarayan, she takes materials into her home and makes up to 300 kites per day with great dexterity, regardless of the heat.

But when temperatures pushed 45°C on successive days this summer, she and her fellow workers felt unwell.

Dizziness, headaches and skin rash are common, as Fatima explained to a delegation of officials from South Africa who visited last week to learn from the city’s Heat Action Plan.

Extreme heat is top of the agenda at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) which is currently taking place in Azerbaijan. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently urged the world to “rise to the challenge of rising temperatures.”

For women like Fatima who work in home-based manufacturing, heatwaves pose a particularly harsh dilemma: the materials are delicate making it impossible to run her ceiling fan while working, yet her livelihood depends on making enough kites per day.

In communities the world over, poor workers face the same cruel trade-off between heat exposure and earnings.

Fortunately, there are solutions to this challenge which the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is generously sharing with international partners.

In May 2010, Ahmedabad experienced a scorching heatwave with temperatures peaking at 47°C. Researchers at Gujarat’s public health university found that the city’s crude daily death rate — that is, the number of deaths across the city from all causes on a given day — rose from its baseline of around 100 to more than 300 on the hottest day.

Faced with evidence that heat costs lives, the municipal corporation acted. With the Indian Meteorological Department and other partners it introduced color-coded extreme heat alerts together with a protocol of actions that government agencies and civic stakeholders implement on high-heat days.

Epidemiologists have concluded that the Heat Action Plan helped avert more than 1,000 deaths annually. A recent World Bank study finds that extreme heat early warning systems — when coupled with an inter-agency response plan — have benefit-to-cost ratios exceeding 50 to 1. 

How did the plan deliver these impressive results?

During the study tour of the 15 South African officials — which was sponsored by the country’s National Treasury with the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs and the City Resilience Program of the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery — the details became abundantly clear.

^{Delegates from South Africa meet members of the Self Employed Women’s Association in the Danilimda neighborhood of Ahmedabad to learn how cool roof treatments and micro-insurance help them cope with extreme heat.}

On a red alert day, clinics activate heatstroke treatment protocols, ambulances are equipped with ice packs, and construction workers adjust their schedules to cooler hours, and health advice is disseminated widely. Drinking water and buttermilk are distributed to vulnerable populations.

At Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel hospital, doctors showcased a dedicated heatstroke treatment ward. At an Oxygen Park built with private funding, delegates learned about techniques for rapid urban greening and felt instant temperature relief upon stepping through the park’s gates.

Civil society organizations play a vital role. Mahila Housing Trust, a community-based non-profit group, has painted some 3 million square feet of roofs with engineered white paint that helps lower indoor temperatures by several degrees centigrade — sufficient to allow several more hours of safe work in peak summer. 

As members of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), women in Danilimda have also accessed hot weather micro-insurance which provides a payment of 2,000 rupees if temperatures exceed a high-hazard threshold. The payment is enough for women like Fatima to pause work during heatwaves without jeopardizing their family’s welfare.

One size does not fit all where resilience to extreme heat is concerned.

Other districts, cities and states in India face their own distinct vulnerabilities to extreme heat and are working hard to strengthen their preparedness along lines pioneered in Gujarat.

With their own distinctive history and needs, solutions in South Africa's cities will necessarily be home grown.

But as the world heeds the UN Secretary-General's words and steps up efforts to reduce harm from extreme heat, turning to India for lessons would be wise.