What Cities Can Teach Countries About Tackling Climate Change

Unprecedented heatwaves, storms, and torrential rains have afflicted the southern United States, much of Europe, and parts of Asia—from the Himalayas to South Korea—in recent months, threatening human health and the environment. They are triggering extensive wildfires, strong winds, tornadoes, and floods that have caused considerable loss of life and major economic damage to homes, vital infrastructure, and livelihoods.

Such extreme events are now occurring with increasing frequency and severity worldwide. The particular significance of the current heatwaves is that they are breaking records for both absolute temperatures and duration, the latter being measured in weeks rather than just days.

These extreme events have diverse impacts, and not only locally: Winds and air circulation patterns can drive choking smoke hundreds of miles from their source, as witnessed recently when U.S. cities in states as far south as Florida were shrouded in dense, acrid smoke from the Canadian wildfires. People were forced indoors, road and air traffic were disrupted, and sports and other outdoor events had to be postponed or cancelled, all while vulnerable people were rushed to hospital with breathing problems.

An authoritative study recently published in Nature Medicine calculated that during last summer’s intense European heatwave, the hottest on record, some 61,000 excess deaths were recorded between May 30 and Sept. 4. These deaths were concentrated disproportionately among the elderly and women, with Germany, Italy, and Spain worst affected among the 35 countries included in the study.

In low- and lower-middle-income countries, many of the urban poor do not even have electricity and/or piped water in their homes. This makes avoiding heat stroke and keeping hydrated very challenging, both at home and in the workplace or hospitals.

It’s within cities that most emissions are generated and most people experience those emissions’ effectsAs indicated by numerous recent authoritative studies, the rate of global warming is outstripping previous predictions. Just last month, Bob Watson, an internationally renowned climate scientist, warned that current progress and voluntary commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions leave us well short of the target of 1.5, or even 2, degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Instead, the world is heading toward an increase of around 2.5 degrees Celsius, which will mean increasingly intolerable conditions across much of the globe, with major implications for food supply and security, environmental sustainability, and the liveability of cities.

From 2000 to 2015, the United Nations promoted eight Millennium Development Goals to monitor and evaluate progress toward sustainability by low- and middle-income countries. These have been replaced for 2016 to 2030 by 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which measure progress on different elements of sustainability by all countries worldwide.

The most recent evidence on global implementation of the SDGs highlights the severe setback suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and predicts only patchy achievement of the various targets and indicators. Crucially, no world region is on target to meet SDG 11, which focuses on resilient and sustainable cities and communities, by 2030.

The SDGs are now halfway through their 15-year implementation period and the 2023 SDG Summit, to be held in New York in September, will underline the shortfalls. While the summit will seek to provide “high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions leading up to 2030,” the real challenge will be to convert such good intentions into commensurate action.

City governments have responsibility for many key climate change, disaster risk, and economic development issues within clearly defined boundaries; and it’s within cities that most emissions are generated and most people experience those emissions’ effects. Consequently, city governments are often more successful at making progress on climate change than national governments. Countries would do well to learn from the progress cities have made.

Yet too many politicians of all persuasions are still not taking climate change seriously enough. Electoral pressure will be needed to convince national governments to put climate change higher up on their agendas and reduce emissions more rapidly.

Overcoming this political challenge will require a change from unilateral imposition of measures to active engagement that seeks to understand residents’ anxieties.

Fortunately, many city governments worldwide are being proactive in taking both mitigating and adaptive action, no doubt because cities are nowadays where most emissions are generated, and most people experience the impacts of climate change.

Expanded and integrated public transport systems, linked to incentives to promote safe and accessible active travel through cycling and walking over short distances, are increasingly common. Temporary vehicle-free zones introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic are being made permanent in cities such as London and New York.

Many cities, from Oslo to Cape Town and Nanjing to Buenos Aires, are also substantially upscaling urban greening initiatives to provide far more shade and increase urban biodiversity. And they are rehabilitating degraded or canalized rivers, streams, and other wetlands through integrated blue-green infrastructure strategies that embrace improved outdoor leisure facilities.

Imaginative rehabilitation has transformed the previous canalized and degraded Cheonggyecheon Stream below key streets in central Seoul into a popular walkway next to clear water with bird and fish life. An even larger-scale success has been the transformation of derelict wharves and related facilities on the Lower West Side in New York City into the thriving and heavily used Hudson River Park recreational and nature zone.

Such initiatives are creating webs of attractive, shady, pedestrianized precincts and corridors, and in the process are helping to upgrade neighborhoods, including in low-income areas.

Curbing urban sprawl, selectively increasing urban density, and designing new urban areas around climate change—including by means of sustainable construction methods and materials—will become ever more important. A taste of what is to come emerged in late May in Phoenix, the fastest-growing U.S. metropolis, which is characterized by low residential density in a semi-arid environment. The state government responded to the unprecedented multi-year drought gripping the Southwestern United States and dwindling flow of the Colorado River by canceling permits for some already approved suburban expansions.

This signified official recognition that unrestricted sprawl is unsustainable, increasing both the per capita cost of providing infrastructure and raising overall water demand in high-use environments with large lawns and gardens to levels that can simply no longer be met. The urgency of this measure was underlined almost immediately, when the city experienced a record-breaking heatwave from June 30 to July 30 this year, with 31 consecutive days at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous record had been 18 consecutive days.

However, government actions are not going to be adequate on their own. Some decisions relate to individual household investments, such as choosing fuel efficient, hybrid, or electric cars; insulating homes and installing passive heating/cooling systems; and installing solar panels or micro-wind turbines on homes, workplaces and community centers or switching to renewable energy supplies. But these steps are unaffordable to many, even if people are willing to take them on principle. Simple government encouragement or imposition of fines for failure to comply will not succeed, but rather cause antagonism and setbacks on urgent issues.

Schemes to assist those with low or no income—the relatively or absolute poor—to cope with environmental change and make appropriate adaptations, like those named above, are therefore vital. Failure to take this sufficiently seriously can have direct political consequences.

This was clearly illustrated in the United Kingdom last month, when local opposition to the mayor’s imminent expansion of London’s ultra-low emissions zone to include the outer suburbs, without adequate compensation or realistic vehicle scrappage payments, played a key role in the opposition Labour Party’s narrow failure to capture former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s parliamentary seat in a by-election in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

The low emissions zone in Glasgow, Scotland’s former industrial heartland, triggers similar perceptions among lower-income residents. And Labour Party mayors in several other major British cities, including Greater Manchester, have sought to postpone introduction of such measure to give residents longer to recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine crisis.

Meanwhile, a different approach to such area pricing has long been operational in Hong Kong and Singapore, wherein access to congested central zones alternates daily between cars with license plates ending in even and odd numbers.

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Demonstrations and other forms of protest have occurred in various cities, particularly in poorer countries, when regulations and restrictions imposed on environmental grounds are perceived to have negative effects on lives and livelihoods of the poor. This has become a major electoral issue in several West European countries, particularly France and Germany, in addition to the U.K., where many conservative voters reject such policies on principle. Many on the political left also resent implementation of net-zero policies amid economic crises, as illustrated by the recent London by-election.

The importance of this is underlined when, in the same area, one group benefits directly and another experiences negative impacts. This issue is currently playing out in London. People living in low-traffic neighborhoods (LTNs), where vehicular access was restricted and street greenery and furniture added during the COVID-19 pandemic, generally support making them permanent. Conversely, people living on nearby streets, which have experienced increased traffic flows because of diversions around LTNs, complain of increased noise, emissions, and danger, and want LTNs removed.

Overcoming this political challenge will require a change in official attitudes, from unilateral imposition of measures—particularly those that will be expensive or require behavioral change—to active engagement that seeks to understand residents’ anxieties and constraints and identify mutually acceptable ways forward.

One recent proposal in the Financial Times, following Labour’s narrow defeat in Johnson’s constituency, would focus on tighter regulation on taxis and vans in the low-emissions zone—which are seldom driven by locals—as well as restricting the eligibility of newly purchased vehicles that don’t meet environmental standards to drive in the zone, while letting residents keep their existing cars without penalties. This would improve air quality while eliminating most suburban London residents’ grounds for electoral backlash.

Avoiding unintended negative consequences and reducing rather than increasing social inequality are central to achieving just transitions to sustainability and resilience. Top-down directives could have disastrous electoral consequences; engaging with voters and their concerns could create a popular mandate for urgently needed reforms.