Earth Today | ‘Community, equity-centric interventions a must to beat the heat within cities’
Published:Thursday | July 28, 2022 | 12:07 AM
A RECENT publication of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has urged the design and implementation of “community and equity-centric initiatives”, to counter the heat associated with climate change, particularly within cities.
“Community and equity-centric initiatives save lives. Many community-centric initiatives, such as cooling centres and heat-health alerts, can reduce heat mortality and morbidity for the most vulnerable to heat-related illness, including outdoor workers, older adults, children, marginalised racial and ethnic groups, the homeless, individuals with a mental disability, individuals with chronic medical conditions, individuals without access to cooling and low-income communities,” said the 2021 publication titled Beating the Heat: A Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities.
The publication – the product of the collaborative efforts of Cool Coalition, RMI, the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, Mission Innovation, and the Clean Cooling Collaborative – noted that while poor and marginalised groups are “the most vulnerable to climate change, they are often left out of the climate planning process, and some adaptation measures may inadvertently exacerbate existing inequalities”.
“Cities can build trust with underserved communities through transparent communications, partnerships with trusted community organisations and leaders, and ample investment to provide needed cooling resources. Cities should also ensure that the district budgets are tailored to neighbourhood needs,” the publication, which was launched at the 26th sitting of the international climate talks in Glasgow said.
“Meaningful engagement with the most marginalised and at-risk communities is essential to advancing heat equity and ensuring that these populations receive access to and benefits from cooling,” it added.
INTRA-URBAN
The publication explained that most cities contain “intra-urban” heat islands, where some areas in a city are hotter than others due to uneven distribution of trees and greenery, parks, and heat-absorbing pavement and buildings – the result, in part, of “historic and current disparities in the way communities are planned, developed and maintained”.
“For example, in the United States the spatial distribution of heat in cities is directly correlated with racial segregation and the ‘redlining’ of neighbourhoods in the 1940s. Similarly, in South Africa, the distribution of green infrastructure is correlated with unequal investments made during apartheid,” it explained.
“Today, the urban heat island effect is strongly correlated with majority-minority, historically disadvantaged and low-income neighbourhoods in cities across the world,” it added.
The situation is one that calls for course correction and there are a number of ways in which this can be done, according to the publication.
These include ensuring fair and inclusive processes for vulnerable communities in the development and implementation of any urban cooling programmes or policies; and ensuring needed resources or benefits and burdens of any urban cooling policy or programme are “distributed justly, with priority given to those with the highest need first”.
Also important, the publication said, is “creating institutionalised structures that address heat equity over the long term and to prevent future inequities; correcting past institutionalised harm that is related to the inequitable distribution of heat within a city; (and) engaging with the public to understand the risks and potential impacts of heat and engaging them in developing solutions”.