Cities - the key to mitigating disaster?

By 2050, two thirds of the global population are expected to live in urban areas, despite only forming 2% of the land mass of the globe. The strategies that cities are taking to combat emissions are therefore crucial to limiting warming to the targets set at COP21.

Figure 1: New York City's daily emissions if one tonne of CO2 was represented by a bubble with a diameter of 33 m. (Source: NPR)

Although cities are considered to contribute up to 80% of global emissions, there is some debate as to whether there is too much blame placed on them. A paper by Dodman (2009) investigates the emissions per capita for 11 cities in four continents, and finds lower per capita emissions for all but two cities (Beijing and Shanghai) compared to their national averages. Dodman uses this as evidence to suggest that by putting so much of the blame on urban areas, we are actually deflecting efforts away from more important emission-reduction opportunities, particularly unsustainable consumption.

A point made by Dodman, that I strongly agree with, is that cities present a great opportunity for emission reductions. There are four key reasons behind this, outlined below (Dodman, 2009):

1.       Local authorities in cities carry more power in terms of land use and planning, and so can introduce environmental initiatives even if they are not picked up nationally.

2.       New technologies are generally introduced first into cities due to their high concentration of people and industries.

3.       The mixture of city authorities, financial partners and research institutions found in cities leads to new physical and behavioural innovations being introduced.

4.       Reductions in carbon emissions can also lead to secondary benefits, such as reduced fuel costs and better health from lower air pollution.

Bulkeley (2010) adds more to the topic, suggesting that the development and implementation of mitigation strategies within cities has grown out of a lack of initiative at national level. The policies that are created at city-level have more of a focus on mitigation over adaptation, and have a large aim toward solutions that carry an economic benefit in addition to environmental advantages (Bulkeley, 2010). I think this is key to forming meaningful strategies that have mass support. So much emphasis is placed the economy, and this is especially crucial for those in the developing world. This was touched upon during the Before the Flood documentary, during an interview with Sunita Narain in which she discusses that there are significant energy shortages in India. For sufficient and competent solutions to be introduced, there must too be an economic incentive, and so a requirement exists for climate change mitigation strategies to be synonymous with development.

Cities are clearly imperative to battling the issue of climate change, not least because of the volume of emissions from them and the concentration of people that live within them. Over the next few posts, I’m going to focus on some of the efforts of individual cities to see what initiatives are in place to inspire others.

Finally, a really insightful website to check out if you are interested in the actions some cities are taking toward climate change is C40. This is a network of 40 megacities from around the world, with details on the efforts and plans of each.