Introduction Climate change is a major threat to human health in South Asia. We mapped existing research on climate change and health in South Asia, identified research gaps, and developed a list of research questions (RQs) to inform a research priority setting (RPS) exercise. Methods We searched in 5 electronic databases for studies published after 2008, followed by screening and data extraction using standard evidence synthesis methods. We conducted a structured narrative synthesis and created evidence gap maps. We extracted RQs verbatim (or in their absence aims/objectives) and coded them to identify unique RQs. Results We retrieved 7273 records to include 308 studies from different countries in South Asia (Bangladesh -96, Bhutan - 4, India -142, Nepal -39, Pakistan - 46, and Sri Lanka - 13). They were categorized as research on: 1. health impacts of climate change (243, 78.90%), addressing 14 broader unique RQs and studying impact on 15 unique health conditions; 2. interventions to protect health from climate change (18, 5.84%), addressing 6 unique RQs; 3. climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts (40, 12.99%), addressing 9 unique RQs; 4. policy, governance, and decision-making tools (34, 11.04%), addressing 6 unique RQs; and 5. adaptation or development of tools and frameworks (9, 2.92%), addressing 3 unique RQs. Evidence gaps were also visualized. Conclusion To the best of our knowledge this is the first systematic map of this domain. We envisage this to facilitate future evidence synthesis and RPS in the region.
Understanding how climatic stressors influence internal migration is crucial for anticipating future population movements and resilience planning in India. This paper investigates climate-induced internal migration in India, focusing on district-level migration patterns and their relationship with climatic stressors using historical census data and statistical modeling. Internal migration, which refers to the domestic movement of people, is often driven by intersecting economic, social, and environmental factors. Climate change is increasing but unevenly playing a role in decisions to migrate. The study emphasizes India’s status as a climate-migration hotspot, characterized by diverse geographic and population heterogeneity, and highlights the limitations of existing migration data, particularly the delayed 2021 census. To address these gaps, the paper employs a novel statistical approach to estimate district out-migration, district-to-district migration, and district in-migration around 2021 by leveraging data from the 2001 and 2011 censuses alongside temperature and precipitation extremes derived from historical climate records from 1961 to 2021. The methodology integrates harmonized district boundaries and fixed-effects modeling to account for confounding factors while projecting migration trends under varying climatic conditions. Results reveal significant associations between climatic extremes, both positive and negative, and migration flows, underscoring the role of climate stressors in shaping migration decisions. By generating predictive estimates for 2021 migration patterns, the study offers insights into how climate variability potentially influences internal migration dynamics in India. The findings contribute to broader discussions on how to incentivize climate change adaptation given the reality of highly mobile populations in India and provide pointers on reducing vulnerabilities in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving areas.
This study investigates rapid densification within Bengaluru, India, where escalating population growth outpaces the capacity of existing infrastructure and services. Recognizing the potential for degradation in urban quality of life due to this widening disparity, the study introduces the Tetrad Axes Graphical (TAG) model. This novel data-driven framework evaluates the neighbourhood’s capacity for densification by generating a visually coded representation of the neighbourhood’s urban form parameters that are necessary to maintain an acceptable quality of life. These parameters, while primarily physical, also reflect socio-political tensions in how density and livability are experienced across neighbourhoods. The parameters represent factors amenable to influence through urban planning interventions, particularly within the context of retrospective planning frequently encountered in rapidly expanding urban centres such as Bengaluru. Applying the TAG model to four high-density neighbourhoods in Bengaluru demonstrates how these indicators can inform retrospective planning and guide targeted interventions. By emphasising context-specific thresholds rather than universal density targets, the TAG model offers planners a diagnostic tool to balance growth pressures with equitable quality of life in the city.
Currently children's needs, perspectives, and rights are not adequately included in public policies, with negative consequences for the health and wellbeing of children and future generations. The 2020 WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission reviewed threats to children's health and concluded that children's needs and voices should be centred in all policies for a sustainable future. Since 2021, Children in All Policies 2030, a global collaboration of policy makers, scientists, and advocates, has implemented the Commission's recommendations by fostering new approaches to participatory, intersectoral policy making across diverse countries. Efforts to implement the Commission's recommendations encountered challenges including flawed assumptions in prevailing policy-making models, failure to fulfil children's right to participate, and an ongoing scarcity of intersectoral policy integration. Eight lessons on what works for improving policy making and implementation emerged: use creative means to involve children, patiently assemble coalitions, prepare to seize political opportunities, harmonise global data to bridge UN partnerships, create national political and technical platforms, use media to change cultural perceptions, use strategic framing to overcome sectoral barriers, and embrace joint learning. Harnessing people's consideration and concern for children and future generations and engaging children's voices represents a powerful political opportunity to reach current development goals and ensure a healthier, more sustainable future.
This paper proposes conceptually rethinking the study of urban food market systems in the Global South, offering an approach that better fits the characteristics of these cities. Urban low-income households in the Global South gain access to food, assemble food plates and make substitutions via food systems that are organised domestically, not fully industrialised, and constituted of actors across the formal-informal spectrum who face infrastructural, institutional and space-related constraints and displacement pressures. Yet, what could be written off as a sub-optimal system makes food available at multiple prices, which is inclusive of low-income household needs. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact charts a pathway for transforming urban food systems. Achieving this vision requires good understanding of how urban food market systems actually work, which has been overshadowed in past research framed in terms of transactional commodity chains, industrial food products, infrastructure grids and centralised logistics. We contend that to avoid maladaptive policy-making, a conceptual reorientation is needed, shifting the gaze towards 'meso-level' market dynamics and social networks that shape how food reaches marginalised communities, via networks that are not fully centralised, and which incorporate informality. Our paper sets out this approach, applying it to the analysis of wholesale markets that provision low-income settlements in two South Asian cities: Bengaluru and Colombo. We find a pattern of urban multi-nodality anchoring food provisioning, with practices that enable household access to an affordable and diverse plate of foods, even during systemic crises such as Covid-19. The contribution of this paper is thus both the detailed account of urban food systems in Bengaluru and Colombo, and an expanded conceptual approach which can be applied to the study of other urban food market systems. While rooted in experiences from the Global South, the questions it raises have global resonance.
