Why Does State-Led Extreme Heat Adaptation Occur When the Costs and Benefits of Action are Diffuse?

While the politics of climate adaptation reliably explain why governments pursue actions with concentrated benefits or resist those with concentrated costs, the conditions driving state actions with diffuse costs and benefits remain theoretically neglected. This session will explore findings from research that examines this gap by investigating extreme heat resilience measures across nine Indian cities in nine states, selected using CMIP6 projections of heat index extremes in a 1.5-degree world.

Drawing on a multi-sectoral survey and 88 semi-structured interviews with government officials, the study identifies 25 implemented heat resilience strategies, 16 of which involve diffuse costs and benefits. Despite expected political pressure from constituents for interventions with concentrated benefits, we find that the implementation of diffuse actions is primarily driven by forms of bureaucratic accountability rather than citizen demand.

Top-down emergency directives and the threat of negative media coverage surrounding heat-related fatalities create concentrated professional costs for local bureaucrats, particularly within health and disaster management departments. Ultimately, we argue that an emerging “no heat deaths” norm is shaping state adaptation policy. To preserve state legitimacy and avoid the highly visible fallout of climate casualties, bureaucrats enact short-term emergency responses with distributed costs and benefits.