Sustainable urban heat risk resilience: lessons on opportunities and barriers to action from Colombo, Sri Lanka

Cities face increasing heat risk due to global and local warming, and the risk is greater in the developing world. South Asia, in particular, faces increasing urban climate risk, but the translation of urban climate knowledge into sustainable climate-sensitive planning is weak. In this paper, we report on our conversations with experts from the Sri Lankan urban planning community on the barriers to and opportunities for urban climate mitigation action. We uncover six themes (insights, integrate, specify, exhort, commitment, and continuity) that best exemplify both the barriers to and opportunities for enhancing heat risk resilience in this primate city. We then map a set of agencies and actors that need to be involved in any holistic risk resilience plan and draw wider lessons to sustainably manage the urgent practical gaps in heat health planning.