From electric buses to pollution-sucking gardens, cities around the world are experimenting with ways to ensure global climate goals are met.

From electric buses to pollution-sucking urban gardens, cities around the world are experimenting with ways to ensure global climate goals are met, as they account for about three-quarters of planet-warming emissions, according to the United Nations.

Here are seven award-winning initiatives to make cities greener, announced by the C40 network of cities tackling climate change on Thursday:

1. MEDELLIN, Colombia – Colombia’s second city has invested more than $16 million to plant almost 9,000 trees to form 30 “green corridors” across the city since 2016. Besides capturing pollution, the plants have helped reduce average temperatures in the city by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and increased biodiversity, providing friendly habitats for animals.

2. ACCRA, Ghana – Since 2016, Accra has been working with more than 600 informal refuse collectors, who used to dump rubbish that was burned at illegal open-air sites, causing pollution. More waste is now being collected, recycled and disposed of safely.

3. KOLKATA, India – Kolkata is planning to have its entire 5,000-strong bus fleet, as well as ferries crossing the Ganges River, run on electricity by 2030. It has bought 80 electric buses and plans to add another 100 next year.

4. LONDON, United Kingdom – London introduced the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone in 2019, requiring all vehicles passing through the city centre to meet strict emissions standards or pay a fee. Within months, the number of more polluting vehicles fell by a third as people were pushed to walk, cycle or use public transport.

5. SAN FRANCISCO, United States – San Francisco’s CleanPowerSF programme allows residents to get their electricity completely or in large part from renewable sources at competitive rates. The city hopes this will help it achieve a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2025.

6. GUANGZHOU, China – Since 2017, Guangzhou has invested $2.1 billion to convert its entire fleet of 11,220 buses to run on electricity and installed some 4,000 charging stations to power them. This has reduced air pollution and noise as well as the city’s transport system operational costs.

7. SEOUL, South Korea – Seoul has subsidised the installation of solar panels on balconies and rooftops of 1 million homes since 2017, as well as city buildings like schools and parking lots. The city hopes to produce up to 1 GW of solar energy – equal to that generated by a nuclear reactor – by 2022.

By Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Katy Migiro. Sources: C40, Transport for London, Thomson Reuters Foundation

People in Britain whose homes are damaged by floods, storms or other wild weather are 50% more likely to suffer mental health problems such as depression or anxiety – even if they do not have to move out temporarily, researchers said last week.

That suggests disaster response may need to be better joined up with psychological support, as climate change brings larger and more frequent extreme weather threats, said Hilary Graham, a health sciences professor at the University of York.

“There’s increasing awareness that beyond these very dramatic human impacts – like loss of life – there are what official reports refer to as ‘psychological casualties’,” said Graham, lead author of a new study.

When extreme weather harms homes, “people’s mental health takes a big hit”, she added.

Researchers looked at 7,500 people surveyed in a national assessment, the main source of information on mental health in England. They found that diagnosed mental health problems rose by about half in those whose homes were damaged by floods, storms, rain or wind.

Some of that stress could be financial, they said, but a lost sense of security also seemed to be a significant issue.

“We believe in the stability of our environment, that it will be the same place tomorrow as yesterday, and we derive a lot of security from that,” said Graham, a sociologist.

“It’s not until that security is threatened that you realise how much you rely on it. Like Joni Mitchell said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’.”

In particular, loss of priceless family photos and other memories “undermines people’s sense their home is a safe place”, Graham said.

As Britain has largely avoided the deaths seen in other countries grappling with the growing risk of weather disasters, it has tended to focus on economic rather than health threats, researchers said.

But as flood risk, in particular, grows – 1.4 million people are now signed up to receive Environment Agency flood warnings – health concerns will need more attention, said the study by the National Centre for Social Research and the University of York.

The findings amount to “a wake-up call about the importance of thinking about mental health when we think about flood prevention”, Graham said.

The Environment Agency and the National Health Service should cooperate more closely, she said, adding that “flood protection is health protection as well”.

Julie Foley, director of flood risk strategy and national adaptation at the Environment Agency, warned that the “devastating” impact of flooding on people “can last long after the flood waters have gone away”.

And while efforts to boost flood defences will protect more homes, “we can never entirely eliminate the risk of flooding”, she said in a statement.

By Laurie Goering.

For over 1 billion people, their ability to survive and thrive is undermined without access to sustainable cooling.

By Jeppe Kofod, Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy, and Rachel Kyte, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All – all co-leads of the Energy Transition Track at the UN Climate Action Summit.

It has been a hot year so far. In France, Belgium and Germany, summer temperatures reached such highs that records were broken twice in just 24 hours. Dangerous heatwaves were felt yet again across India, Africa, Russia and the Arctic – the list goes on.

From the poles to the tropics, the world is getting hotter and the destructive effects of the climate emergency are being felt. Unsurprisingly, this has brought greater attention to the issue of cooling –   often taken for granted – and has begged the questions: how do we deliver cooling sustainably in a warming world and how do we keep people, medicines and food safe?  

But what is cooling? Your mind first turns most likely to air-conditioning. But cooling, and how it touches our lives, is about so much more. Cooling is essential to keep food nutritious, vaccines effective, and people safe during heatwaves. In hot climates, it makes economies productive, and for growing numbers of people, life without it is unimaginable.

The impacts are plain to see. Heatwaves already kill an estimated 12,000 people annually across the world, a number the World Health Organization says will grow to 255,000 people per year by 2050 if unchecked. Nearly 20% of temperature-sensitive healthcare products in India arrive damaged or degraded because of broken or insufficient cold chains, including a quarter of vaccines.

Sustainable Energy for All research shows that for over 1 billion people, their ability to survive and thrive is undermined without access to sustainable cooling. It puts out of reach hopes for health care and nutritious food, good schools and comfortable workplaces.

Sustainable cooling is essential for economic growth, and without it, it will be the developing world that feels the most significant “productivity penalty”. By 2050, work hour losses – worth billions of US dollars – due to excessive heat and lack of access to cooling are expected to be more than 2% and as high as 12% in the worst-affected regions of South Asia and West Africa.

In a warming world, cooling is not a luxury. It is an issue of equity, and an urgent and growing problem that calls for fast action.

Delivering cooling sustainably – using little energy and without polluting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that speed global warming – will also be essential for energy systems to be in line with the triple challenge: meeting sustainable energy for all as agreed under the Sustainable Development Goals; the Paris Agreement with the promise of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius; and the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol to rid ourselves of HFCs.

By 2050, indoor cooling alone will consume as much electricity as India and China today. If we don’t start grappling with cooling sustainably, the spike in energy demand and climate-forcing pollutants will drive a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

ROOFS AND RENEWABLES 

Solutions exist. For example, new innovations in off-grid “cold chain” refrigeration that need little power to get a farmer’s goods safely from farm to table without spoiling. Scaling up innovations and investment in clean cold chains can boost farmers’ incomes, help people lead healthier lives, and reduce food waste.

We must think holistically about reducing demand for cooling. There are simple and cost-effective solutions, including moving to cool roofs, painted white or planted green. We can also use solar power to drive fans for people living in densely packed slums, creating safer living conditions and reducing the dangers of frequent power outages during heatwaves.

In rural villages, renewable energy can power cooling for schools and clinics, meaning that children can have more productive days at school and families can take their children to be vaccinated with confidence that it will be effective. 

These efforts can be supported in three ways. One, increase finance and deployment of energy-efficient solutions; two, invest in zero-carbon or no-to-low global warming cooling innovations for the future; and three, think systematically about meeting cooling needs while minimizing energy demand, utilizing access solutions like district cooling and solar home systems.

COLLECTIVE ACTION

We must also collectively rethink how we understand cooling needs across cities and cold chains, and design and finance solutions and technologies that meet those needs.

Leading governments should integrate cooling into their national climate action plans, setting strong energy-efficiency requirements for building codes and cooling technologies.

Cities must integrate cooling needs into urban planning, develop heat action plans to protect the vulnerable in heatwaves, and paint roofs and walls white to reduce the urban heat island effect.

Industry can invest in energy-efficient cooling of their production facilities and value chains.  Technology providers can help deliver affordable and sustainable solutions by working with the public sector to bring the best technologies to scale. Investors can set requirements for energy-efficiency in investment projects.

Next week at the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit, the energy transition track – led by Denmark, Ethiopia and Sustainable Energy for All – will shine a light on the need for sustainable cooling. 

This work will highlight the innovative solutions from forward-thinking businesses, and see governments commit to national cooling plans that meet the needs of their citizens with hyper-efficient energy solutions.

As the summer begins to cool down for many, we must not let our action and commitment to thischallenge cool off with it.

Instead of a wasteful ‘take, make and throw’ approach, companies should copy indigenous principles and aim for a ‘circular’ way of work that recycles and re-uses.

Global businesses should heed traditional, indigenous knowledge to better protect land, honour old customs and boost profits, participants at a conference in New Zealand said on Thursday.

Instead of a wasteful ‘take, make and throw’ approach, companies should copy indigenous principles and aim for a ‘circular’ way of work that recycles and re-uses, said participants at a summit devoted to the circular economy.

“We’re a Maori organisation so while there’s a very strong commercial and business arm to what we do, there’s also a cultural, charitable and community focus,” said Kerensa Johnston, chief executive of Wakatu Incorporation.

New Zealand-based Wakatu has about 4,000 shareholders who mostly descend from the region’s original Maori land owners.

Johnston said the firm followed the traditional tenets shared by many indigenous people, whose way of life is under threat globally as governments and corporations seek to develop the land and resources that sustain their native communities.

“We understand that our relationship to the land is inherent in the health and well-being of our people,” she said.

The multi-million dollar enterprise has businesses that range from farming to food and drink, and operates with a 500-year, inter-generational business plan, said Johnston.

NO MYTH, NO FABLE

Protecting land and promoting sustainable development were built into indigenous culture yet were often lost in modern firms, said Joe Iles of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British charity that promotes the circular economy and hosted the two-day meeting.

Such principles could help companies reduce waste and use a host of products longer, while still boosting growth, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, by phone from New Zealand.

“The Maori world view places a great emphasis on the interconnectedness of everything,” said Iles.

“It’s serious technical knowledge. It’s not based purely on altruism or fables or myths.”

Up to 2.5 billion people around the world depend on indigenous and community lands, which make up more than half of all land globally.

Hinemoa Awatere of New Zealand’s Ministry for Environment said there was “increasing willingness” by her government to embed indigenous knowledge in the wider economy.

Indigenous businesses were flourishing in New Zealand and could do so elsewhere, she said, so long as mainstream currents that shape Western business listened to ideas from the South.

For Chris Kutarna, an academic at Britain’s Oxford University, indigenous principles with appeal to consumers could easily be woven into modern business, be it in a more sustainable use of raw materials to better product packaging.

“The big cognitive shift that we need to make is from discounting the past to revaluing the past,” he said.

“Knowledge is a collectible too,” Kutarna said.

The rights of indigenous people to land is protected by international legal conventions including the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was endorsed by hundreds of countries in 2007.

Yet from India to Brazil, indigenous communities are often threatened by logging, mining and agribusiness companies.

By Adela Suliman; editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.