Toward Cleaner Skies
As extreme heat and shifting rain patterns threaten lives and livelihoods, the Self Employed Women's Assosciation is pioneering solutions that redefine how we measure and respond to climate change.
The impact of climate change on the health and livelihoods of the poor is mediated through multiple unforgiving pathways.
Relentless months at temperatures above 100°F, both at work and at home, offer no respite.
Wages are lost as it is sometimes just too hot to work. The poor also suffer from exhaustion, bodily harm, and mental fatigue. Hot summer months are followed by monsoons that have of late been unpredictable and even unseasonal, disrupting crop cycles, and fueling further wage loss and food insecurity.
Climate change is not a distant reality for SEWA’s members. Their community-led innovations range from ice-coolers for street vendors, cool-roofs for their homes, and cooling stations for their communities, to the creation of one of the first parametric heat insurance products anywhere in the world.
Looking Back & Moving Forward
Members of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) reflect on the 50 years the organization has supported and organized women in India, particularly through the social, political, and economic crises of those decades.
Now, the organization is preparing for the challenges ahead, especially those brought on by climate change.
In this video, members highlight SEWA’s core values and how they are guiding the organization’s proactive approach to prepare for, mitigate, and reduce the hazardous effects of climate change across their communities.
The Agariya community in Kutch migrates seasonally to the vast desert that was once connected to the sea. Here, from October to April, these communities first prepare – by hand – large vats, which are then filled with briny groundwater drawn up by pumps. In 2021, summer temperatures in Kutch soared and stayed above 120°F, making it one of the hottest places on earth. The potable water that the Agariyas had ferried into the inland saltpans became too hot to drink, and the food they brought spoiled without refrigeration. SEWA responded by building underground water tanks and transporting watermelons to provide hydration and temporizing nourishment.
SEWA had long worked with and invested in these communities. Small loans allowed the workers to invest in solar pumps, replacing the diesel pumps that had precluded them from earning a living wage. The solar panels are taken back to the villages after the salt harvest, to power homes. The switch from diesel to solar has mitigated air and noise pollution, allowing flamingos to return to their annual migratory path through the Little Rann.
In the summer of 2024, cyclones in Dubai gripped international headlines. The same weather phenomenon dumped heavy rainfall on the ready-to-harvest “ripe” salt in Kutch, destroying six months of work and the year’s wages.
By 2023, SEWA had collaborated with the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and Blue Marble to create a first-of-its-kind extreme heat microinsurance product. The insurance provided cash transfers to daily wage workers when certain temperature thresholds were reached. Having not received payouts as anticipated, SEWA members questioned both the basis of these thresholds and the harms they were meant to prevent. Why were three days at 110°F worse than ten days at 104°F? If the goal was to protect wages, should the threshold not be lower since the fruits and vegetables on their vending carts spoiled sooner?
Partnering with researchers from Harvard, 1000 SEWA members across eight occupations are now tracking the microenvironments in their homes and workplaces. They are measuring the impact of heat and humidity on human physiology by monitoring their own heart rates, sleep patterns, and biomarkers, some continuously, night and day, for 13 months. Thousands of microsensors and biosensors will help redefine thresholds for early warnings, work conditions, and health protections.
Heat, Humidity, and Human Limits
The graphics here present early findings from 2024. While the oppressive summer temperatures start falling as the monsoon sets in, the concomitant rise in humidity keeps the wet bulb globe temperature — a sensitive indicator of how humans perceive heat — at levels far above recommended thresholds for human wellbeing.
This study, the largest of its kind, is a contribution to the world, from some of the poorest communities affected by climate change, so we may narrow gaps in our understanding of the uncertain future we face.
