Every morning, Rekhaben and her husband push their vegetable cart onto the streets of Ahmedabad, India, knowing they will spend the day under the scorching sun. During the hottest hours, they take turns resting in the shade in a nearby park while the other watches over their cart, doing what they can to earn a living despite rising temperatures.
Extreme heat in 2025 left Rekhaben so weak that she needed days of medical treatment, including IV drips and injections. But staying home was not an option. Like millions of informal workers across South Asia, her family’s income depends on what she and her husband earn each day.
Rekhaben’s story is becoming increasingly common across South Asia. The region needs to create jobs for about 280 million new working-age people by 2050. Cities will be at the center of this effort. Yet, as temperatures rise, extreme heat is emerging as one of the greatest threats to jobs, productivity, and economic growth.
A new World Bank report, A Livable Future: Tackling Extreme Heat for Jobs and Growth in South Asia’s Cities, finds that increasing heat strains infrastructure, disrupts businesses, reduces jobs, and erodes productivity and incomes, particularly for those who can least afford it. Managing extreme heat is no longer just a climate imperative. It has become central to South Asia’s jobs and growth agenda.
Unlike floods or storms, heat leaves few visible signs of destruction, yet its economic costs are enormous. The number of South Asians facing a month or more each year of dangerous heat stress – when the human body cannot maintain a safe temperature without active cooling – is projected to quadruple by 2070, from 120 million today to 520 million.
Much of the human cost does not appear in official statistics. Heat-related deaths are typically recorded as cardiac or renal failure, so a five-day heatwave associated with some 30,000 excess deaths can pass unrecorded as a heat event.
Yet extreme heat already subtracts the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs annually, as businesses face disruptions to power, transport, and operations and workers slow down, stop work, or become ill. The poor bear the greatest burden. A heatwave can cause informal workers to lose 40 percent of their earnings while also raising costs for water, cooling, and healthcare. Without adaptation, rising temperatures could reduce South Asia’s GDP by nearly 7 percent by 2050 – the steepest projected loss of any developing region – reducing investment, government revenues, and long-term competitiveness.
The World Bank report highlights actions that governments can take now, starting with measures that cost little and protect people immediately, while also initiating larger investments the region will need over time.
The report proposes action around three priorities:
- Investing in the human, natural, and physical infrastructure that cities need to remain productive during extreme heat, such as stronger health systems, greener public spaces, and resilient power and transport networks. Cities around the world are adjusting outdoor working hours during heat alerts, requiring rest and water at worksites, and extending income support to the poor when work becomes unsafe. Three Indian states – Bihar, Tamil Nadu, and Madhya Pradesh – have recognized extreme heat as a recurring disaster risk, requiring year-round attention. India’s Sixteenth Finance Commission has recommended extending this recognition nationally, and other governments in South Asia are positioned to do the same.
- Strengthening the institutions, rules, and planning needed to make heat resilience part of everyday governance rather than seasonal emergency response. Early-warning systems generate an estimated $50 in benefits for every $1 invested. Ahmedabad’s heat action plan has cut peak-heat mortality by 47 percent.
- Mobilizing private investment to expand efficient cooling, resilient buildings, and modern energy systems that protect people, businesses, and economies from rising temperatures. Investing in resilient cooling supply chains, domestic manufacturing capabilities, and next-generation technologies can make efficient cooling more affordable and accessible while strengthening energy security, creating jobs, and reducing emissions. Governments can also reduce future cooling demand by integrating passive cooling principles into affordable housing and housing-for-all programs, ensuring that the homes being built today remain comfortable and energy efficient in a hotter climate. Tamil Nadu’s passive cool-roof initiative, which has reduced indoor temperatures in government buildings by 4 to 5 degrees Celsius and is now being expanded to schools, demonstrates how simple design interventions can improve thermal comfort, enhance productivity, and build the case for wider investment in heat-resilient buildings.
Decisions made over the next decade will determine whether South Asia’s cities remain engines of opportunity or become constrained by extreme heat. The buildings, infrastructure, institutions, and industries constructed today will shape the region’s productivity and competitiveness tomorrow. The knowledge and technology exist, and financing solutions are emerging. Now is the time to act. By investing in heat resilience today, South Asia can protect lives and livelihoods, safeguard economic growth, and create the jobs needed for the next generation.
READ MORE: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/voices/extreme-heat-is-a-jobs-crisis-south-asia
