#world cities

New analysis emphasises the need for ambitious emissions cuts from countries. Half of the largest cities on the planet will be at risk of one or more climate hazards by 2050, according to the latest report from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). Floods, heatwaves, cyclones and water stress will increasingly pummel these populous hubs unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control. LSEG’s ‘Net Zero Atlas’ report sets out what level of emissions cuts countries should be targeting to avoid such climate catastrophes, ahead of the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) due early next year. “The cities in our study - nerve centres of the world economy that contribute almost 20 per cent of global GDP and are home to 440 million people - are particularly exposed to climate risk,” says LSEG’s global head of sustainable investment research, Jaakko Kooroshy. “Impacts are already beginning to materialise at only 1.3°C of warming.” Those climate impacts were felt on a shocking scale in the Spanish city of Valencia this week, where a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours on Tuesday - causing deadly floods that have claimed more than 200 lives.

THE ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENON OF GINO RICARDO WORLD CITIES

Gino Ricardo hails from the land of clogs, cheese, tulips, and windmills, also known as the Netherlands. He is a motion designer and self-taught architecture/street photographer. His first camera was purchased on a trip to South Africa. When he first started taking pictures, he would spend an hour a day focusing on architecture and street scenes during his lunch break.

Gino’s style is unique in its abstract, graphic qualities that play with shape and form, utilizing high contrast. His imagery can come across as striking and sometimes even alienating.

A World City - drawn June 12, 2020

Cities that engage with citizens and put them at the centre of their climate policies report better outcomes for public health, social integration, the economy, and the environment, according to a new report by CDP released on Thursday (13 October).

Cities are responsible for 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that shifts in policy and citizen practices in urban areas have the potential to significantly reduce pollution worldwide.

If these policies are people-centred, CDP argues, cities can benefit beyond simply reducing their emissions, with those that take this approach reporting 7 times as many co-benefits as those that don’t.

In key areas like public health, the economy, and the environment, cities with people-centred policies were at least 20% more likely to report co-benefits than the average for all cities surveyed.

Some reported benefits included improved air quality, increased job creation, and better protection for vulnerable populations.

CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is a charity that runs a global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities and governments to manage their environmental impacts.

According to CDP, people-centred climate action starts by including residents in the policymaking process and considering their needs while making decisions.

For instance, the Chicago city government — one of the respondents to CDP’s survey — contacted over 2,100 residents across almost all of its 77 community areas to learn about their priorities for the city’s Climate Action Plan. The city then implemented these priorities into its policies with the aim of maximising community benefits.

80% of the 998 cities surveyed reported facing significant climate hazards like extreme heat, heavy rainfall and flooding, or drought. 60% also reported that they expected these climate hazards to become more intense in the near future.

Floods, storms and heatwaves are expected to become more frequent with global warming, meaning cities in Europe will need to adapt to extreme weather, according to the European Commission, the EU’s executive.

Just 25 big cities – almost all of them in China – accounted for more than half of the climate-warming gases pumped out by a sample of 167 urban hubs around the world, an analysis of emissions trends showed on Monday.

In per capita terms, however, emissions from cities in the richest parts of the world are still generally higher than those from urban centres in developing countries, researchers found in the study published in the open access journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.

The study compared greenhouse gas emissions reported by 167 cities in 53 countries, and found that 23 Chinese cities - among them Shanghai, Beijing and Handan - along with Moscow and Tokyo accounted for 52% of the total.

It included more cities from China, India, the United states and the European Union because of their larger contribution to global emissions and significance to the climate debate.