5.2.2 Heat stress: Urbanisation and informality induced exacerbations

Dilapidated housing which are unable to withstand heavy rains add another layer of vulnerability. Rebuilding after a flooding event also drains their finances in turn affecting other aspects like health and education.

Livelihood impacts: Common spaces (at settlement and settlement- private interface) become important spaces for livelihood activities within most informal settlements- be it for rice puff industries, scrap work, agriculture related storage, livestock rearing, or for small scale vending. Flooding accompanied by pollution make these spaces unusable for carrying out these activities and leads to loss of livelihood related belongings leading to economic impacts. Lack of financial cushions during these situations often pushes them into a vicious poverty cycle.

Health impacts: Flooding coupled with clogged drains and improper solid waste management, and limited access to clean drinking water during these times impact the health of informal settlement dwellers, especially children.

Coping strategies

Since flooding incidents are a result of the larger urbanisation narrative and the inherent deprivations of informality, coping strategies that most of these settlements follow is limited to quick-fix measures. These include covering valuable and domestic paraphernalia with plastic sheets and storing them on higher racks within the dwelling unit. In some cases, a few shanties were upgraded into pucca houses (with private efforts) which were jointly used by severely affected neighbours (especially women and children) during flooding events. Their inability to move out of these settlements even during flooding events (due to financial constraints) is a further revelation of their vulnerability.

5.2.2 Heat stress: Urbanisation and informality induced exacerbations

Manifestations

Rapid urbanisation in the city is leading to densification inside informal settlements as well. This is especially true for settlements that have evolved from traditional villages into informal slums. Common spaces between buildings are increasingly being occupied by new construction. Conversion of traditional buildings (built of materials which are relatively better accustomed to providing relief during summers) are progressively being replaced by concrete houses- often to increase private space. Decrease in commons space (associated with loss of vegetation), increased densification, and concretisation of internal streets as a part of redevelopment efforts has increased the heat stress in most of the informal settlements.

Some of the settlement dwellers already face increased heat stress associated with their occupations. A projected increase in temperature due to climate change, along with loss of vegetation and common space, coupled with existing occupational vulnerabilities will further exacerbate heat stress.

Implications

Health impacts: While continuous exposure to heat leads to a presumed improvement in tolerance levels, the long-term impacts of such exposure on health are often dire and not well understood. For instance, the urban poor working in puffed rice industries mentioned that heat (associated with their livelihood and increase in temperature over the years) is often tolerable for them as compared to the cold weather. However, the increased heat stress drastically cut shorts their working years- most of them are unable to work beyond 45 years of age.

Coping strategies

Urban poor in the informal settlements in Dharwad use a variety of seemingly simple strategies to cope with climate change impacts. One such strategy is to sleep outside their house/hutment at night during summer, which was common across most of the urban poor settlements that was studied. However, it is interesting to note that there are also cases of reversal of such coping strategies when the community perceives other issues as a higher threat than heat. For example, in a settlement which has come up on a now extinct lakebed, a shoddy drainage network has resulted in a major issue of rodents and pests at night. This has forced the community to reverse their coping strategy of sleeping outside during summers, since they perceive health issues as a much higher threat than summer heat.

Using settlement level common spaces for socialising and carrying out domestic activities during summer evenings was also seen in most of the settlements.