How 73 Cities Are Using Innovative Climate Action To ‘Future-Proof’ Themselves

As Houston, Miami, Mumbai and other communities clean up following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and unusually relentless monsoons, a new report offers strategies for bolstering urban defences against climate change.

“Cities100: A guide to cities preparing for the next Harvey and Irma” profiles the authors’ choices for the “100 best urban solutions to climate change around the world.”

Thepublication and accompanyingonline database were released this week as new storms continued to devastate islands in the Caribbean. Meanwhile,power outages plague more than a million residents of Florida and Georgia a week after a ferocious hurricane devastated the U. S. southeast.

Blunt predictions of worsening weather patterns are a motivation for cities to take preparatory steps now.

The international think tankSustainia collaborated on the new project for the third year in a row withC40, the megacities network focused on climate change, andRealdania, a Copenhagen-based philanthropy thatsupports the built environment.

The 2017 version highlights 100 innovative ideas from 73 cities in 29 countries. The report focuses on solutions in five areas: transportation, waste, energy, mitigation and adaptation.

“This year’s report shows how more cities than ever before are using climate action to future-proof against challenges such as extreme weather, air pollution and growing populations,” Sustainia says in ablog post.

Global city leaders rely on multiple techniques to adapt to the harsh new realities of climate change. Examples from the report include:

• Jakarta’s flood reduction: Nearly 80 percent of public green space in congested Jakarta has been lost to development in the past 40 years. To reserve the trend and ease severe flooding, the Indonesian capital plans to build3,000 child-friendly parks by 2022 in high-density areas. The green space could lessen the duration of floods by absorbing storm run-off.

• New Orleans’s climate action: After being battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the coastal U. S. city of New Orleans hopes to reduce the frequency and strength of hurricanes byreducing emissions linked to climate change.Climate Action for a Resilient New Orleans, part of the office ofMayor Mitchell Landrieu, details 27 steps the city can take to halve fossil-fuel emissions by 2030.
• Quito prioritizes urban nature: The capital of Ecuador — known for urban sprawl that criss-crosses mountains and valleys — strives to protect fragile ecosystems throughmunicipal planning. This involves measuring deforestation and adapting endangered habitats to climatic shifts. The broader goal is to mitigate climate change through preservation of natural environments.

Strengthening flood and storm defenses does not always require costly expenditures and newfangled technologies. “By integrating nature into city infrastructure for better climate adaptation, cities can quantify the value of ecosystem services,” Sustainia says.

Another important takeaway: Smaller cities can be leaders on resilience. That’s because they are well-positioned to serve as test beds for ideas and innovations that can be scaled if proven successful.

The authors emphasize that climate action can achieve a twofold function. Such initiatives can improve the quality of life in urban neighbourhoods most vulnerable to weather-related catastrophes, while also helping cities save money over the long term by reducing clean-up costs.

These urban profiles also highlight some creative financing models that municipalities can pursue to fund climate change-mitigation strategies. For example, residents of Suwon, South Korea, formed a cooperative to invest insolar technology and reinvested the profits in community endeavors.

This story was originally published by Citiscope.