YuLin Zhen, Photography Editor

Last month, the School of Public Health collaborated with the Resilient Cities Network to provide ten climate-conscious recommendations to cities across the globe.

Resilient Cities, or R-Cities, is an organization supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Its network consists of over a hundred global cities committed to building and investing in urban resilience, or the ability to prepare for and respond to climate change. The R-Cities network stretches across six continents, including cities from Boston to Bangkok. A recent report published by the School of Public Health and R-Cities as a part of the Urban Pulse program focuses on city-level resilience solutions as well as the relationship between climate, health, and equity within cities. It outlines 10 urban sustainability and resilience recommendations.

“We reached out to different city leaders to get a sense of what their perspective on climate and health was and what they felt their cities were lacking,” Abby Ong, graduate research assistant at the School of Public Health, said. “From that, we generated that list of the ten recommendations going forward for cities.”

So what are the 10 recommendations? According to Urban Pulse, greening initiatives, health-related interventions, data infrastructure for planning disaster management and public awareness are some of the most notable areas for improvement. Ong also stressed the importance of sufficient infrastructure in a resilient city, with waste management, water systems, transportation, food systems and heat mitigation as some examples. 

According to the report, several cities remarked on a shift away from nonrenewable energy sources, in hopes of growing their clean energy sectors. Overall, Urban Pulse has displayed how different cities are affected differently by climate change, and how several different areas play a role in climate change readiness.

“The work that we’re doing around Urban Pulse tries to amplify the role of cities in solving some of the greatest crises the world is facing,” Karl Astbury, program lead for climate and health in the R-Cities Network, told the News. “Part of that is making cities a part of the conversation when often conversations on global warming are on a nation-state level.”

R-Cities was born out of an initiative started ten years ago called “100 Resilient Cities” that aimed to institutionalize the idea of urban climate readiness.

For their first five years, R-Cities placed chief resilience officers within city governments around the globe who helped make climate change readiness a focus. 

“No matter what language the officers spoke, they all spoke a language of resilience,” Astbury stated. 

Recently, R-Cities shifted its focus to actively helping cities deliver on the sustainability strategies they laid out. 

At times, this included addressing the root causes of climate change.

“Without a doubt, the most significant cause of global climate change is the burning of coal, oil, and gas,” Dr. Scott Dennings, visiting professor of climate change at the School of the Environment, said. “The remaining ten percent or so is how we manage our lands with agriculture and forestry.”

It is contributing factors like these that R-Cities recommends global communities should be mindful of when preparing for the climate of the future. 

According to Dennings, the immediate consequences of a warming global climate are heat waves, droughts, forest fires, floods, sea level rise, and the loss of biodiversity. Some of these changes are already happening across the world, whereas some have been happening for decades. 

“Over the next 50 years, we will see roughly twice the warming we’ve seen up to now and much more rapid sea level rise,” Dennings said.

Dennings stated that most of these dire implications can be avoided by shifting to other sources of renewable energy. In the recent report, the School of Public Health and R-Cities found several examples of renewable energy incorporation already in place.

In Kampala, Uganda, there are programs advocating for clean fuel for cooking through partnerships with organizations in the European Union. Penang, Malaysia, has begun documenting its plans to develop a carbon inventory for the state with financial and technical support from the Malaysian federal government. Additionally, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, has implemented a National Biodigester Program that can benefit urban farmers through subsidies for the cost of biodigesters, devices that break down waste to produce a renewable energy source.

The report also states the importance of “putting health at the heart of” cities’ climate change agendas. It recommends city officials identify the health risks of climate change, such as disease and healthcare accessibility, especially for more vulnerable communities. 

“With how many people live in cities, it’s important that we pay attention to climate as something that has a significant impact on health,” Ong said. “The intersection between climate and health is felt more and more in people’s daily lives as climate change continues.”

The American headquarters of R-Cities is located in New York City.