Comment Piece in Nature Calls for Attention to Heat Governance

In a Comment piece published in last week’s issue of Nature, by Ladd Keith of The University of Arizona, Sara Meerow and Dave Hondula of Arizona State University, V. Kelly Turner of the University of California, Los Angeles, and James C. Arnott of the Aspen Global Change Institute propose a set of practical guiding principles for researchers and government, nonprofit, and private sector decision-makers to take real action in the face of increasing heat risk.

“We call for a focused research program to support ‘heat governance’—the actors, strategies, processes and institutions that mitigate and manage this hazard,” the researchers write. “New institutions and policies need to be developed to address heat across all levels of government. And that requires a strong evidence base.”

The authors propose six guiding principles that speak directly to the need for a clear model for addressing heat, particularly for those most at risk—the marginalized, poor, young, older, homeless, institutionalized and those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Read the full Comment in Nature: “Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics.” Read the UArizona press release here.