With rising global temperatures and a domestic air-pollution crisis, environmental factors will come to occupy an increasingly important place in corporate decision-making and operations. The intense heat waves seen this year across India only underscore the urgency of the situation, both for businesses and for society at large. Higher-than-average temperatures present a real threat to human life and health, and workplace design and policies must account for this. More generally, air pollution demands longer-term, strategic responses by corporations as well as short-term mitigation. 

At a recent online session of the India CHRO Forum, Bharati Chaturvedi, Founder and Director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, and a member of several government bodies and committees, explored both the science and the human-resource implications of the twin crises of climate change and pollution. She also looked at what businesses can do, both to safeguard their people and to give back to society.