Conversation #59

For many weeks, last summer, my region (Sicily) was burning in flames. Blown by African winds, fires rapidly destroyed ancient woods and crops in the countryside, attacking houses and larger estates at the margins of urban areas. In the days following the fires, cities were enveloped in a dense, grey smoke, making it difficult to breath and to go about life as usual outside our homes.

Without any relation to the fires, the summer 2023 has also passed into history as the hottest since the end of the eighteenth century, when temperature started to be systematically recorded. On 24th July, with peaks ranging from 45 to 48 degrees, temperature records in many parts of Sicily were crushed. All this happened a couple of weeks after a date – the 6th of July – that climatologists have defined, figures in hand, as the warmest day ever. If scientists and environmentalists needed fresh arguments to counteract climate change skeptics, the summer 2023 has given a big assist to them.

There is no doubt cities are, for their recent history and prospectively, the main part of the climate emergency. Estimates suggest that by 2030 almost 5 billion of the world’s 8.3 billion people will live in cities, a great part of which will be in developing countries. This will imply that, in the same period, an increase of around 80% in annual energy demand (above 2006 levels) will come from cities, mostly in Africa and Asia, subject to rapid urbanization. As we know, in these contexts local governments struggle to control urban development, and even less to lower its impact on the climate.

As a result, climate policies in developed countries will likely not be able to balance out the increase of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) expected from urban growth in the coming years, much beyond the 70% of energy-related CO2 emissions that already comes from cities and towns (EEA, 2020). While underlining the role of urban areas in warming the planet, we must not ignore that cities are increasingly subject to climate disaster (Nohrstedt et al. 2022), as they have historically developed in locations – such as coastal areas or along rivers – where extreme weather events can provide the greatest threats to population and the built environment (IPCC, 2020).

At the same time, cities are the places where solutions to the climate change can be more easily found (Rosenzweig et al., 2010). Municipal authorities are usually responsible for a wide range of policies that can affect the emission of GHGs. They directly run public transport and have the power to regulate the circulation of private cars, both source of considerable emissions. Other policies such as land use planning and buildings regulations can affect urban density and technology in buildings, the other major source of emissions in urban areas. Moreover, city governments are often the laboratory for environmental protection, given their habit to lead collaborative endeavors with the civil society and the private sector, without which no challenge to climate change can be issued.

To properly address climate change, however, we need to create a common understanding within and outside the public sector, making all stakeholders aware of the roadmap being followed to see tangible results in a reasonable course of time. Thankfully, no one within cities is still questioning the need to mitigate the impact of human activities on the climate, that means most of all reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere from transport, heating, inefficient power consumption, etc. Although municipalities have a limited power in driving the huge incentives needed to reduce the emissions from the private sector, remarkable initiatives led by cities have paved the way for the acceptance of mitigation policies among citizens and local communities. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, at a global level, or the European Covenant of Mayors are the larger and most influential networks that deserve to be mention.

At a slower pace, there is also a progress in the spreading of adaptation strategies within cities, that means preparing our territories for the risks (for people and the urban infrastructure) deriving from events associated with climate change, first of all heat waves and flooding (EEA, 2021). Strategies to take action in sectors such defense of the built environment from sea-level rise, or the reshaping of old infrastructure into green infrastructure to make cities more resilient are being designed in a number of cities across the globe. In the European Union, after so many years focusing on climate mitigation (Reckien et al., 2018), adaptation projects from cities have started to be advocated by EU policy-makers and being funded under the structural funds.

Optimism for local mobilization and good practices within cities, must not divert our attention from other, and more insidious, challenges ahead of us. In a regional world where crises of different types have increased the disparities between territories and social groups, unfortunately climate change can drive to further exacerbating inequalities among and within urban areas.

Adaptation policies, especially, require local governments to be granted greater capacity to deal with the many innovation processes needed to make our territories prepared to face climate risks. Overall, cities need to have a well-developed planning system, to control land-use, making future development compatible with the eco-system, and to design adaptation scenarios. Cities are also required to operate within a very complex multi-level governance system (Shi and Moser, 2021), as adaptation projects often have an impact over resources (e.g. rivers, green areas, etc.) under the control of other institutions and stakeholders. Not least, impactful adaptation policies may be highly expensive to the public sector, requiring financial stability in local government and different source of funding. In other words, differences in the advance of adaptation strategies tend to reflect development differences among cities and regions as a whole, a fact that recent analyses on the ‘geography’ of climate policies in Europe have demonstrated (Carter, 2011; Geneletti e Zardo, 2016; Reckien et al. 2018).

The other inequalities climate change might increase in the long term are within cities. Although recent events have damaged urban areas regardless social of stratification, no doubt poor settlements are structurally less prepared to protect populations from the effects of climate change. In many parts of Europe, post-war public housing estates have never been renovated, with the result that the buildings’ technology is seriously affecting the living conditions of dwellers. The increasingly frequent heat waves associated with climate change will likely lower comfort within houses, impacting on the health of the most fragile people.

These issues, among many others, tell us once more that, while global warming raises major challenges for national governments and international collaboration, cities and local communities have to play a key role in delivering practical solutions.

References:

Carter, J. G. (2011). Climate change adaptation in European cities. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 3, 193-198.
EEA – European Environmental Agency (2020). Urban adaptation in Europe: how cities and towns respond to climate change. EEA Report 12/2020, Copenhagen.
EEA – European Environmental Agency (2021). Nature-based solutions in Europe: Policy, knowledge and practice for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. EEA Report 1/2021, Copenhagen.
Geneletti D., Zardo L. (2016), Ecosystem-based adaptation in cities: An analysis of European urban climate adaptation plans. Land Use Policy, 50, 38-47.
IPCC- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2020). Global Research and Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science. Report
Nohrstedt, D., Hileman, J., Mazzoleni, M. et al. (2022). Exploring disaster impacts on adaptation actions in 549 cities worldwide. Nature Communication, 13, 3360.
Reckien, D. et al. (2018). How are cities planning to respond to climate change? Assessment of local climate plans from 885 cities in the EU-28. Journal of Cleaner Production, 191, 207-219.
Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W., Hammer, S. A., Mehrotra, S. (2010). Cities lead the way in climate–change action. Nature, 467, 909–911. Shi, L., Moser, L. (2021). Transformative climate adaptation in the United States: Trends and prospects. Science, 372, 6549.