Cities, climate and crisis!

Hussein Shobokshi CITIES are on the front line of climate change. As contributors to a warming climate, they are also at the coalface when it comes to keeping large populations safe from flooding, rising sea levels and drought. It is a threat many urban authorities are keenly aware of — and are willing to do something about, according to James Alexander, head of finance and economic development, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. “At the moment, city leaders are among a very small group of people calling for and implementing the significant changes required to keep us on a trajectory that avoids catastrophic climate change,” he notes. “Cities have big plans across different types of sustainable infrastructure.” It is said to be the defining issue of our time, an urgent global crisis that affects everyone and every area of life. Yet rich governments meeting in Paris this December for the UN climate summit will quibble over giving paltry amounts to help the world’s most needy adapt to global warming, and it is believed that just 2 percent of all private philanthropic money is being spent to address it. A recent World Bank study found that if the global temperature rises by 40C, the average number of extremely hot days in the Middle Eastern cities could exceed 115 per year. That would make life outdoors intolerable for hundreds of millions of people for much of the year. Arab governments have taken a global technological lead and carved out a reputation for investing heavily in massive solar power array projects such as the UAE’s Shams 1. With Irena, the world’s inter-governmental renewable energy body, now based in Abu Dhabi, the UAE is also developing future technologies for desalinating water, generating electricity and reducing waste at industrial scales. According to Jeremy Leggett, founder of UK solar energy company Solarcentury and Solar Aid, a social enterprise, which has brought solar energy to over 1 million people in Africa, there are several ways that foundations and philanthropists can successfully fight climate change. “The first is to invest in zero or low-carbon climate-solution companies and projects; the second is to divest from fossil fuels and to reinvest in clean energy companies; the third is to campaign to put shareholder pressure to end spending on exploration for and development of new fossil fuel reserves,” he says. “The fourth is to accelerate zero or low-carbon markets… by giving grants — on a scale they never have before – to the multitude of projects that can make a difference across the greenhouse gas emissions spectrum.”