Arup, Mahila Housing Trust, and Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) join Arsht-Rock’s Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance
The coalition, launched and hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock), gathers expertise to effectively deliver heat resilience in the world’s cities.
Mon, Oct 24, 2022
OCTOBER 24, 2022, Washington D.C.—Three new organizations with deep expertise across built infrastructure, engineering, heat resilience, insurance, microfinance, and sustainable development have joined the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance (EHRA), the coalition launched and hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. EHRA was formed to gather expertise across the broad set of disciplines that are needed to effectively deliver heat resilience in the world’s cities. These organizations expand and deepen the capacity and perspective of EHRA going forward.
Arup is a collective of designers, advisors and experts working globally and dedicated to sustainable development. Founded to be both humane and excellent, Arup collaborates with its clients and partners using imagination, technology and rigor to shape a better world. Arup has deep experience working with cooling technologies and implementation.
Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) works to strengthen grassroots collectives of women in the urban informal sector to advance constructive dialogue and action on improving their housing, living and working environments. MHT works in cities across the Global South, including in India, Nepal and Bangladesh to provide services to the poor and make the voices of women heard at the intersection of climate resilience, city-level planning and governance processes. MHT’s climate resilience work won awards from UNFCCC and UNDRR in 2019. It has developed over 15,000 women leaders and impacted the lives of 3.7 million poor individuals directly.
Today the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) has a membership of 2.1 million women workers, all in the informal sector of the economy. This makes SEWA India’s single largest organization of poor informal sector women workers from 18 states of India. Heat waves have become an unprecedented cimate crisis which affects the work, income, and livelihoods of SEWA’s members, and also reduces their access to food security and social security.
EHRA is comprised of global, city, and county leaders and experts in public health, humanitarian assistance, disaster management, policy, implementation, climate risk and climate science, finance and insurance, and engineering and design. EHRA supports local, regional, and national governments with reducing the risks and impacts of extreme heat to their residents.
“Arup, Mahila Housing Trust, and SEWA all bring new critical experiences and capabilities to EHRA,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, VP of the Atlantic Council and Director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center. “This adds growing momentum to Arsht-Rock and EHRA’s work with governments around the world to protect the most vulnerable people from extreme heat.”
“We’re committed to working on practical solutions to the global challenge of extreme heat and are excited to join a like-minded group of organizations and experts to collectively amplify our shared goals of a cooler, safer world,” said Robert Kay, Arup’s Americas Climate and Sustainability Services Leader.
“Strengthening resilience to extreme heat has been a core part of our mission to uplift women across India, who suffer up to 50 percent productivity losses due to the rising temperatures in the summer. EHRA gives us a great global platform to share what we’ve learned and accomplished, and find partners to collectively tackle future heat challenges,” said Bijal Brahmbhatt, Executive Director of Mahila Housing Trust.
“SEWA has been working on building resilience of workers, workers’ organizations and resilient policies to manage heatwaves. We are delighted to join the Alliance, where SEWA can bring data on the voices of the poor, impacts of heatwaves, needs of workers and we can together work to build resilience,” said Reema Nanavaty, Director of SEWA.
The Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, now 45 members strong, continues to collaborate with cities through its City Champions for Heat Action (CCHA) initiative and provide support on comprehensive heat planning through its recently launched Heat Action Platform. This year, Monterrey and Santiago have joined CCHA and appointed Chief Heat Officers to lead heat-related initiatives in their cities
About the Adrienne-Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center
The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) builds individual and community resilience in the face of climate impacts. We pledge to reach one billion people around the world with resilience solutions to climate change by 2030. For more information follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
