Ahmedabad experienced one of its worst heatwaves in 2010 with 1,344 deaths, while 24,223 people lost their lives between 1992 and 2015 across India. The heatwave was extremely severe this year as well.
Mahila Housing Sewa Trust (MHT), an NGO with 25 years in the field empowering women from marginalized communities and resolving housing issues has been helping slums in Ahmedabad adapt to the impacts of climate change.
They focus on four issues that are prevalent in a majority of the slums in summer - heat stress, floods, vector-borne diseases, and water scarcity.
One of the major problems in the slums was extremely high temperatures inside the houses as high as 50 degrees as a result of the metal sheet roof, which raised the indoor temperature by two or three degrees. MHT provided loans to such houses to install ModRoof – a special cooling roof locally manufactured from coconut husk and paper waste. This brought the indoor temperatures three to five degrees lower than outdoors.
Women are leading in all these initiatives. MHT forms Community Action Groups (CAG) with women from both formal and informal slum communities before going on to teach and equip them.
In addition to facilitating the installment of cooling roofs or cheaper alternatives such as sun-reflective white paint, the NGO has also launched early warning systems for heat as well as floods, water quality testing, and cleanliness drives among other initiatives.
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