Measures to manage heatwaves and promote urban greening and tree plantation
PIB reports NDMA heat-wave guidelines and several Centre–State measures combining disaster preparedness with urban greening and passive cooling actions.
- NDMP treats heat waves as a major hazard and sets duties for Centre, states, districts and local authorities during prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.
- NDMA guidelines help heat-wave-prone States/Union Territories prepare Heat Action Plans for vulnerability assessment of elderly, children, outdoor workers and the urban poor.
- NDMA guidelines include built-environment UHI factors and recommend long-term heat mitigation through urban greening, cool roofs and cool pavements.
- Government urban programmes such as AMRUT and AMRUT 2.0 support parks, green spaces and urban water bodies to improve urban climate resilience in heat-prone states.
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has reported Government measures to manage heat-wave impacts and to reduce heat stress in cities through urban greening and passive cooling. The Government’s approach connects disaster management planning (through the National Disaster Management Authority and the National Disaster Management Plan) with urban climate actions under central schemes. This matters for UPSC because heat-waves require both short-term preparedness for high-risk groups and long-term heat mitigation in the built environment.
What happened (announced measures reported by PIB)
PIB reports a multi-institution and multi-scheme strategy covering heat-wave prevention to recovery, plus urban cooling and tree cover actions.
UPSC may frame heat-waves not only as an emergency response problem but also as a planning-and-implementation problem across ministries and levels of government—where built environment cooling measures (UHI factors, cool roofs) sit alongside Heat Action Plans (vulnerability assessment, prevention–preparedness–mitigation–response–recovery).
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