Reducing city heat must be a key goal for World Bank climate mission

The annual meetings of the World Bank may primarily be a venue for national ministers but tackling the challenge presented by #urban #heat intensity must be part of the bank’s mission to create a #liveable #planet 

Sometimes it is the very small facts about climate change that really pull you up short. The temperature inside the minibuses that transport 16 million workers within South African cities can hit 39 deg C (102 deg), one study found. 

And residents in cities in Latin America can expect to have to endure 80 days of extreme heat conditions out of every 365 by the year 2050. Plainly humans cannot thrive in those conditions and may even struggle to survive.

With around two thirds of the world's population now living in cities, reducing their impact on climate change will be essential to meeting the global target of keeping the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 deg C above pre-industrial levels. 

Using satellite imagery from 100 East Asian cities, the Bank’s researchers found that they were, on average, 1.6 to 2.0 deg C hotter than their surroundings. Known as urban heat intensity (UHI), this contributes in two ways — absorbing energy from the sun in man-made surfaces and buildings, and the lack of water and wind reduces natural cooling effects.

Amid the five days of intense gatherings and bilateral meetings between national government ministers that are the essential part of the World bank’s annual meetings, some of its senior executives held a Knowledge Café — an informal meeting open to anyone with a badge to the meetings — on adapting to extreme urban heat.

Ming Zhang, global director for the bank’s urban, resilience and land global department highlighted a series of temperatures records that have been broken just in the last few months alone: the world's hottest twice in one July week; the hottest August since records began; and the second hottest September. “Extreme heat is already a reality for people, economies and infrastructure in all regions,” he said.

Given that the Bank’s slogan under new president Ajay Banga is to create a world free from poverty on a liveable planet, extreme urban heat will be an insurmountable obstacle to liveability. Bank figures show that with just two degrees Celsius of global warming, 2 million people in South Asia, 1 million in East Asia and 800 million in Africa would regularly experience such unendurable heat conditions by 2050.

While it is essential to mitigate against global warming by reducing carbon emissions, that is the job for the rich developed nations in north America and  Europe whose activities have generated pollution over the past centuries but enjoy relatively temperate climates.

Places, people & institutions

Cities in the Global South, which are mostly situated in countries with the lowest level of fiscal resource,  will need to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and will need financial assistance from the rich countries to do that. What might this involve? Zhang highlighted three areas: places, people and institutions.

Within the first, water- and vegetation-based interventions can lower peak daily temperatures by as much as 2 to 7 deg C. Incorporating ventilation corridors into urban planning codes and masterplans can bring down temperatures while climate-sensitive designs that use shades such as covered walkways and shaded public spaces can reduce temperatures.

People-focused initiatives might include yellow, orange and the red alerts when temperatures reach dangerous levels, provision of public drinking water outlets and the better protection of heat-exposed workers. For institutional reform, many cities around the world have appointed  extreme heat task forces or created chief heat officer roles.

As a multilateral lender, owned and responsible to its 189 country shareholders, the Bank can only lead by example and seek to put its knowhow into practice. As Niels Holm-Nielsen, its global lead on resilience and disaster risk management, told the café, it is developing decision support tools that are relatively cheap and fast to implement and which include nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate resilience. 

These use resources and incorporate processes already found in nature to restore ecosystems and support communities. Whether it a project for reforesting or reinforcing wetlands, every little initiative can make a difference.