LiveScience.com Yahoo News 8 Apr 11;
Cities — home to half the world's population — face potentially dire consequences from climate change. However, they often fall short when it comes to addressing the issue, according to an analysis of urban policies.
“Climate change is a deeply local issue and poses profound threats to the growing cities of the world,” said Patricia Romero Lankao at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, who conducted the analysis. “But too few cities are developing effective strategies to safeguard their residents.”
Romero Lankao cited cities for not reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate global warming and for not preparing for the likely effects of climate change.
Scientists expect that climate change will bring with it more extreme weather, such as storms and heat waves. Because of their density and locations, cities are often at greater risk for natural disasters caused by extreme weather. Heavily paved cities can magnify heat, worsening air pollution and causing widespread health problems, for example.
But even after recent natural disasters, such as the Russian heat wave of 2010, leaders are often failing to prepare, according to Romero Lankao. This is because fast-growing cities are overwhelmed with other needs, leaders are pressured to foster economic growth at the expense of health and safety standards, and climate projections rarely offer insight into the effects on individual cities, according to Romero Lankao.
And in spite of their potential to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, cities often take a hands-off approach, she said.
“Cities can have an enormous influence on emissions by focusing on mass transit systems and energy- efficient structures,” Romero Lankao said. “But local leaders face pressures to build more roads and relax regulations that could reduce energy use.”
Meanwhile, another recent study found that people's acceptance of global warming waxes and wanes with the weather, so if the day is unusually cold, they would be less likely to believe humans are causing global temperatures on average to rise.
Romero Lankao’s studies appear this month in a special issue of the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (with co-author David Dodman of the International Institute for Environment and Development) and in an upcoming issue of the journal European Planning Studies. The research was conducted in association with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme and funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor.
Climate Change Targets Developing World's Cities
Reuters PlanetArk 8 Apr 11;
Many fastest-growing cities, especially those in the developing world, stand to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change, a new study reported on Thursday.
Few urban areas are taking the necessary steps to protect their residents -- billions of people around the globe -- from such likely events as heat waves and rising seas, according to research to appear in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability and European Planning Studies.
They are also failing to cut their own emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases, the study found.
"Climate change is a deeply local issue and poses profound threats to the growing cities of the world," study author Patricia Romero Lankao, a sociologist specializing in climate change and urban development, said in a statement.
Because half of Earth's population is in cities, scientists like Romero Lankao are focusing on the potential climate change impacts in these areas.
The mere fact that they are cities, with densely packed construction, places their populations at greater risk from natural disasters, including those expected to be made worse by climate change.
Storm surges can inundate heavily populated coastal areas and heat waves can warm up paved cities more than surrounding areas, Romero Lankao found. And these events can be amplified in an urban environment.
500 CITIES WITH A MILLION OR MORE
In cities, prolonged hot weather can exacerbate existing levels of air pollution, causing health problems. Poorer urban neighborhoods that lack reliable sanitation, drinking water or roads are at increased risk, according to Romero Lankao, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The number of city-dwellers worldwide has quadrupled since 1950, the study found, projecting that by 2020, more than 500 urban areas will have a million residents or more.
But urban leaders are largely failing to prepare for coming natural disasters that could affect their people, including building public transport that would cut greenhouse emissions, Romero Lankao said.
"Cities can have an enormous influence on emissions by focusing on mass transit systems and energy efficient structures," she said. "But local leaders face pressures to build more roads and relax regulations that could reduce energy use."
She noted that some cities' efforts to cut emissions are part of a larger push to ease traffic and other problems. She cited central London's Congestion Charging Zone, which aims to encourage more use of public transit, as one example. In Latin America, Curitiba, Brazil, and Bogota, Colombia, are integrating new development with mass transit systems.
Romero Lankao's study was conducted in association with the United Nations Human Settlements Program and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
(Editing by Laura MacInnis)
