Handbook for urban heat management to help build long term resilience to extreme heat

With rising average temperatures and increasingly frequent heatwaves, extreme heat has emerged as a key challenge around the world. Between 2000 and 2019, heat-related deaths exceeded half a million globally making extreme heat the deadliest climate hazard.

The risk from extreme heat is exacerbated in cities in the Global South, where the combination of a tropical or arid climate, rapid urbanisation, and relatively high concentrations of poverty render them particularly vulnerable. 

Even when there is broad support for action on extreme heat, many local governments lack the technical and financial capacity to effectively enhance resilience to extreme heat in their cities.

Serving as a practical resource for local governments to address heat risk in their city, AtkinsRéalis, in collaboration with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, has developed the Handbook for Urban Heat Management in the Global South for the World Bank.

The Handbook contains comprehensive guidance for local governments and communities to assess heat risk, respond to heatwaves, and build long term resilience to extreme heat in their cities, supported by a compendium of solutions for heat resilience at the household, neighbourhood and city scales. It distils technical approaches from the existing body of literature on urban heat into a step-by-step, action-oriented process that can be applied by city governments in low- and middle-income countries.

The Urban Heat Management Handbook is a gamechanger for cities in the Global South, offering practical, scalable solutions grounded in local realities. Co-created with over 100 heat experts, city leaders, and practitioners from Tanzania, Uganda, India, Bangladesh, and Thailand, the handbook reflects lived experience and tested strategies that work on the ground.

It puts the most vulnerable people at the centre, championing inclusive approaches that not only build resilience but also deliver high-impact, cost-effective solutions for communities most at risk. With backing from the World Bank, UNEP, and UN-Habitat, and integration into their global programmes, the handbook is poised for wide-scale application—supporting cities across the Global South to act decisively on extreme heat.

Drawing on the research and consultations that have informed the Handbook, Siddharth Nadkarny, Associate Director and Viktoria Pues, Principal Consultant in the Sustainable Futures practice at AtkinsRéalis, outline five key principles that underpin the guidance in the Handbook and serve as a roadmap for decision-makers to future-proof their cities against extreme heat.

1 - Start now, if needed, start small

In many cities in the Global South, extreme heat is already the most critical climate risk; however, the perception that addressing this challenge is too costly or complex acts as a barrier to taking action.

A consistent thread in the Handbook is providing cities with a menu of small steps to begin their heat resilience journey. Raising the importance of heat management among decision-makers, creating awareness within urban communities, or carrying out qualitative assessments of heat risk start creating momentum and lays the groundwork for more comprehensive interventions.

The city of Nepalgunj is a great example of how starting small can catalyse substantial change – a small heat risk study in 2021 helped built momentum for the development and implementation of a Heat Action Plan and inspired other cities in Nepal to develop their own approaches to combat heat. 

2 - Make the journey together

Extreme heat affects everyone – from residents and businesses to infrastructure and ecosystems – and addressing it also requires collaboration across sectors and scales. While the guidance in the Handbook is aimed at supporting city government staff to drive solutions, it encourages engaging community groups and academic organisations to co-create locally-relevant solutions.

Partnering with national governments and neighbouring municipalities can unlock additional resources for implementation and help drive an ‘all-of-society’ approach to managing urban heat. For example, the Dhaka City North government developed a regional early warning system for heatwaves through an innovative partnership with the national meteorological department and development organisations, enabling a scale and effectiveness that may not have been possible if implemented by itself.

3 - Establish clear and funded mandates for long-term action 

Action on extreme heat spans urban planning, public health, disaster risk management, and social welfare. This cross-cutting nature of the topic often means that responsibility for urban heat management is fragmented across various city government departments.

However, many cities which have been able to integrate urban heat management within existing governance structures and establish reliable funding for long-term action have had the most success in bridging silos, as illustrated by Cape Town, South Africa.

By nesting an action plan focusing on extreme heat under its Climate Action Plan, the city was able to draw on existing, cross-departmental institutional structures and financing models to make rapid progress on implementing solutions for extreme heat. 

4 - Tailor heat management to the city 

Any effective solution for extreme heat needs to be tailored to the context of the city, reflecting its climate, geography, institutional capacity, and socioeconomic profile. Designing, prioritising, and implementing solutions should consider impacts for the most vulnerable groups, identified hotspots, climatic context, size, and institutional capacity.

Often, actions aimed at building heat resilience generate economic and environmental co-benefits or improve quality of life – these co-benefits can be leveraged to secure stakeholder buy-in for heat action or help determine locations where interventions can support the most vulnerable communities in the city. The guidance and best practice solutions included in the Handbook are accompanied by examples and considerations to give users a basis for tailoring to their specific context.

5 - Build on what has worked well in the past

Consultations and research for the Handbook strongly suggest that cities don’t need to start from scratch to take action on heat. Albeit often implemented as one-off interventions or limited in scale, many cities already have successful initiatives to address extreme heat in their context – for example, traditional construction techniques deploying passive cooling principles, or community-led initiatives for responding to heatwaves.

Scaling up such initiatives enables cities to anticipate implementation risks and make effective use of limited technical or financial capacity. A key component of building on what already works well is embedding a robust monitoring, evaluation and learning process within heat management plans to help refine strategies and course-correct for future heat events.  

The Handbook for Urban Heat Management in the Global South is available to download here.