Cities and Climate Change: A Recipe for Action

This year’s Climate and Society class is out in the field (or lab or office) completing a summer internship or thesis. They’ll be documenting their experiences one blog post at a time. Read on to see what they’re up to.

By Danielle Peters, Climate and Society 2014

Ingredients:

Photo: Elizabeth Haslam/Flickr

• (1) Mayor (or alternate head of city government), sprinkled with some of his/her agencies
• Multiple scientists from research institutions and universities
• A pinch of each of the following stakeholders:
  • Water managers
  • Utility providers
  • Transportation authorities
  • Businesses
  • Community and environmental groups
  • Building owners and residents

Cooking Directions:

1. The mayor announces the need for a collaborative body to understand and adapt to climate change locally and convenes scientists and stakeholders as members.
2. The mayor requests the scientists to create hyper-local climate projections for the city and investigate how the City’s climate has already changed.
3. Share climate information with the stakeholders.
4. Mix water managers, utility providers and transportation authorities in one bowl to discuss infrastructure needs and vulnerabilities to climate based upon experiences and climate projections.
5. In another bowl, mix businesses, community and environmental groups, building owners and residents to discuss needs and vulnerabilities based upon experiences and climate projections.
6. Combine the two bowls into a report, stir in the scientists, and highlight any overlapping vulnerabilities.
7. Provide report to mayor and his/her agencies.
8. City government develops and implements a Climate Adaptation Plan to reduce vulnerabilities outlined in the report.
9. Repeat steps 2 through 9 on a semi-annual basis, incorporating growing scientific knowledge and local capacity.

Optional: Wait until climate disaster devastates city before cooking.

*************************************************************************************

I’ve spent my summer internship at the Center for Climate Systems Research, working alongside researchers who investigate hyper-local climate information for cities and provide a recipe similar to the one above to city leaders around the globe so that they can plan for and adapt to their unique climate challenges. Some of their work is focused right here in New York City and the Northeast while other projects look at altering these to meet the different needs of cities in developing nations.

Being in this office has demonstrated to me that while national leaders here in the U.S. continue to debate whether or not climate change is even occurring, and while international governments fail to come to consensus on reducing global emissions and point fingers of blame, cities may actually be the most adept entities to reduce the worst effects of climate change. Perhaps action moves more quickly at such a local scale because the failure is more tangible, putting clearly visible lives and livelihoods at risk.

The recipe above has been modeled off of the New York Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). It can be dished out for cities around the globe, with some alterations according to different needs and conditions on the ground. To begin the process, cities can wait for a natural disaster to strike that shifts political tides – as more complex and larger government entities often are forced to do – but they don’t have to.

Why is this recipe so good? Because while we are all empathetic to the climate struggles endured by others, protecting your own home is a dish best served local.