Investment in urban resilience is vital to ensure cities can survive and thrive

Confirmation by the Copernicus Programme, the European earth observation agency, that 2023 was the hottest year on record and that this year could be hotter still will be bad news for #cities. Their leaders will need to look beyond #adaptation and focus on finding finance for #resilience.

The continual rise in average temperatures has brought with it more weather-related events such as heatwaves, droughts, excess rainfall and flooding. For instance, London was hit by flash floods in 2021 that damaged homes and businesses, and the following year saw temperatures hit 40°C that contributed to the 387 heat-related deaths recorded that year.

Copernicus also warned that global temperatures were on track to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — the level that signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement set as the threshold for containing climate change. Thanks to their fixed locations are being home to so many people, urban areas are also among the most vulnerable places in the world and will likely bear the brunt of climate change. Given that 2023 was 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level, city leaders are focusing on how to cope, rather than how to prevent, further rises.

For years we have used the terminology employed by environmental scientists and climate experts, talking about “adaptation” — finding ways to survive better in the new environment — and mitigation, or efforts to reduce or prevent emission of greenhouse gases. But the extremities of the climate emergency mean city leaders are looking beyond adaptation towards the idea of resilience.

Although the two are often used interchangeably, resilience includes adapting and coping with change but also putting in place measures to enable recovery and rebuilding. As the Somerset Wildlife Trust puts it, resilience is the ability to “bounce back”.

Heatwaves, rainfall, floods and rising seas

London was in the spotlight last week after the London Climate Resilience Review, commissioned by the mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said climate hazards were increasing in severity and frequency, and warned that London faced “significant risks including more intense and frequent heatwaves, more intense rainfall, the risk of flash flooding and sea level rise”. A quadruple whammy as Fleet Street newspapers would have put it.

But the problems are widely shared. The UK House of Commons Public Affairs Committee said this week that a total of 5.7 million properties in England were at risk of flooding. It said that although the government had set out an ambition to create a nation more resilient to flooding, it had not defined what this meant. “It has no measure of resilience to measure progress against,” it warned.

And this is certainly not just a UK issue. I came across a 2050 climate index produced by a company called Nestpick, a platform for renters to search mid-to-long term furnished apartments for rent on the internet, in more than 3,000 cities. Its focus is on the risk from rising sea levels and on general climate risk and it highlights a mix of wealthy and developing countries at risk. The higher the ranking, the greater the predicted change in climate between now and 2050. The most at-risk is Bangkok, but its highest-ranking 10 also include Melbourne, Amsterdam and Cardiff as well as Seoul and Ho Chi Minh City.

But it is not only coastal cities that are risk. Riverside cities such as Paris, Toronto and London get high rankings while tenth place is taken by Marrakesh, which is 100km inland, because of its rising exposure to general climate risk.

The risk for leaders of both cities and their hoist countries is that those urban environments will become increasingly uninhabitable and threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people whether because of floods, heated-related illness or drought-induced famines.

The C40 Cities group of mayors points out that urban areas deal with “water-related challenges” such as floods, droughts, and water scarcity on a daily basis. The pain falls heaviest on cities in low and middle-income countries, which are 10 times more likely to be affected by flooding or drought than those in high-income countries.

It has been estimated that climate-related flooding and drought is expected to cost the world’s major cities $194 billion a year. However, to avert that bill will require upfront investment on a similar scale. The recent COP28 climate summit shows how hard it is to get governments to pledge money, even when the potential gains are obvious. Nevertheless, city leaders must continue to demand the finance needed to ensure real resilience that will enable cities to both survive and thrive.