Saving the Climate - Saving the Cities
Introduction
A Message from ICLEI to Local Authorities
Saving the Climate - Saving the Cities is a briefing book for municipal leaders. This third edition includes recent scientific evidence regarding climate change and its potentially devastating effects on urban areas. It is published in 1995 against a backdrop of haywire weather, a harbinger of what we may see routinely in a "greenhouse" world.
In 1995 summer heat waves baked large cities. Over 500 people died of heat stress in Chicago, US. "The people who don't have the resources to put themselves back in the comfort zone are the ones who are dropping," a scientist told the Chicago Tribune.
Floods caused extensive damage to rural towns and villages. The Yangtze River in China flooded due to rapidly melting spring snowpack, killing 1,200 people and ruining 1.1 million hectares (2.7 million acres) of farmland. In the Netherlands spring floods caused the Rhine to rise, forcing 240,000 people out of their homes.
Costs are mounting. The floods in China caused $4.4 billion in damage, and in the Netherlands, hundreds of millions of damage. The US President announced $100 million in disaster relief for the 19 states hardest hit by the heat wave. Grain prices shot up due to worldwide shortages caused by droughts in Australia and downpours in North America.
Cities, towns, and villages are now at the center of efforts to combat and mitigate global warming, through their participation in ICLEI's Cities for Climate Protection campaign. Local authorities everywhere are taking action. The City of SaarbrŸcken, Germany, for instance, reduced its total carbon dioxide emissions by 7% from 1990 to 1993.
To even the most cautious, rational person, it seems evident that climate is changing; weather is chaotic; and human well being, especially in cities, may suffer. ICLEI hopes this briefing book will spur further action among local authorities. The time to act is now!
Peter Heller
Chairman, ICLEI
Introduction
Cities have flourished for thousands of years. They have evolved into a myriad of urban forms in response to local geography and climate, population growth, trade, colonization, and wars. Planners and architects, from Hippodamus of Miletus to Le Corbusier, have also shaped cities with their cumulative visions.
Until this century cities all over the world shared one common trait. They were compact communities that brought people, goods, and services together efficiently, with streets built on the grid pattern popularized by classical city planners, which was based on right angles. This versatile grid facilitated construction of row buildings with common walls and multi- story apartments with street- level shops. Local travel was mostly pedestrian since work, shops, places of worship, and other services were close to the home. Because it required little travel and maximized heat retention in buildings, this urban design, however unintentionally, promoted energy- efficient urban lifestyles.
Cities Are Part of the Problem
The growth and proliferation of cities is one of the defining cultural and ecological characteristics of the industrial era. While large cities existed before our age (Rome, for instance, reached over one million inhabitants at the height of the classical period), the advent of central power generation gave us the ability to deliver large quantities of energy to small geographical areas. Cities today represent such concentrations of energy conversion that they glow brightly on infrared photos taken from outer space!
Burning coal and oil as fuels unfortunately turned city cores into dirty, polluted habitats. The new technologies and public demand for more gardenlike settings caused cities to sprawl. The car and cheap gasoline made it possible to escape to cleaner, greener, more private suburbs. Industrial, commercial, and residential areas became segregated, further boosting the demand for non- pedestrian travel. Cheap electricity provided bountiful amounts of energy to heat, cool, and light modern buildings wherever they were constructed.
As well as changing the shape of cities, these technologies and the expanded use of fossil fuels for everything from home heating to transportation caused cities to lose many of their earlier energy- efficient features, such as common- wall buildings and pedestrian travel. Indeed, today, despite the gains made by the industrial economies in energy efficiency over the past 20 years, per capita energy consumption is rising in every industrial country. The continuing sprawl of cities is partly to blame.
As a result, cities have become major polluters themselves, producing prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other emissions that are harmful to the environment and to public health. The likelihood that half the world's population will live in urban areas by the year 2000 compels us to look at what local authorities can do to become more energy- efficient, to reduce fossil energy consumption, and to slow down global warming.
Cities Are Especially Vulnerable
In the future cities, towns, and villages will bear the brunt of the effects of global warming. All cities will be indirectly affected by global warming because the supply of water, food, and fiber resources upon which they depend will be subject to changes in precipitation and other weather related events. Coastal cities will be directly vulnerable to flooding and storm surges.Some features that are particular to urban areas make them especially sensitive to warmer weather - what is known as the "heat- island effect." The urban landscape make heat waves worse because the dark surfaces of paved streets and tiled rooftops produce more heat when struck by solar rays. The direct result is human illness due to urban smog and heat stress.
Global warming will most severely affect urban areas in the poorest nations. The effects of global warming will be felt sooner and with more force in the developing countries because their ability to adapt to change is already stretched to the limit. Cities there will experience the social dislocations and disruptions caused as new stresses on agriculture displace populations and refugees head from the countryside to the city, from South to North, and from poor to rich nations.
Today there are 25 million environmental refugees, mostly in sub- Saharan Africa. A first cut assessment indicates 162 million people in developing countries are at risk from sea level rise, and at least 50 million from droughts and other climate related dislocations!
Cities Are Part of the Solution
During the last two decades, new ideas and forces have started to reshape cities. Leon and Rob Krier in Europe, Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, and Elizabeth Plater- Zyberk in the United States, and many other urban designers and architects have been at the forefront of the New Urbanism. As suburban sprawl has made cities more private and secular, the New Urbanism now seeks to restore traditional urban design and put communal focal points, like public buildings and squares, back into the neighborhood. Mixing residential, commercial, and public- service buildings in the community is preferred to segregating them because it promotes less travel.Meanwhile, we now know that urban form dramatically influences local energy used for travel as well as for the heating and cooling of buildings. Australia's Peter Newman and J. Kenworthy in their landmark 1989 study, Cities and Car Dependence, documented in 25 cities the proportional relationship between population density and transportation energy use. Higher densities are conducive to public transit and walking, and urban residents opt for these modes of transit when they are convenient and affordable.
ICLEI's Urban CO2 Reduction Project has documented an even broader relationship between population density and the energy intensity of American and European cities. Residents of the American cities use almost twice the energy per capita as their European counterparts, as well as twice the land to live, work, and recreate. Much of the difference in energy intensities can be attributed to two factors: first, the European cities' ability to recycle the waste heat from their power generation through district heating systems, and second, the greater use of transit, bicycles, and walking in the Europeans cities. It should be noted, however, there are also major differences in the local per capita energy use and CO2 emissions of different European countries, so that there is still considerable room for action there.
Victoria, Australia; Portland, United States; and Helsinki, Finland, are now in the forefront of integrating land- use planning with state and municipal policies to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions. Victoria's Greenhouse Neighborhood Project has found, for instance, that by optimizing land use through traditional neighborhood design - a gridlike plan, mixing employment, commercial, and residential uses - emissions could be reduced by up to 42% of those generated by more recent development practices.
From the kampungs of Surabaya, Indonesia, to the "urban villages" of Seattle, United States, local authorities are creating, restoring, and upgrading traditional neighborhoods. This new activism is possible because local authorities in many countries possess many of the regulatory and economic tools that can make cities greener and more energy- efficient. In addition to land use and zoning, these tools include building codes and licenses, infrastructure investments, governance of gas and electric utilities, and jurisdiction over local schools, parks, and recreation areas.
With these tools, municipal governments can:
- encourage developers to design more traditional neighborhoods,
- legislate energy- efficient building codes,
- construct combined heat and power systems;
- encourage local utilities to invest in energy saving measures in the community;
- construct public transit systems, pedestrian areas, and bicycle lanes,
- plant trees and expand green space, and
- teach local residents to be more frugal in their use of energy.
The Multiple Benefits of Action
Why should local authorities act now on global warming, when they are already confronted with many pressing economic and social problems? Can they really make a difference?The answers are simple. Municipal investments in energy efficiency pay back the local economy handsomely in "green jobs" (jobs that support energy- efficient practices) and lower energy bills. Furthermore, more compact neighborhood development can reduce municipal infrastructure costs today and in the future, while nurturing more livable communities.
In the short- term, energy efficiency measures save money on local fuel bills. Communities can convert these savings into other goods or services while creating jobs in labor- intensive trades such as construction. In the long- term, cities that function efficiently are less of a financial burden to the local governments. For instance, though a transit infrastructure based on rails may be initially more expensive to build than one based on roads, its life cycle costs are lower. The public transit buses in Toronto, Canada, for example, must be retired every 10 years, but its electric streetcars manufactured 50 years ago are still plying the rails of the city!
Apart from reducing the ecological risks caused by global warming, energy efficiency measures create a host of other environmental and public health benefits. The reduction of fossil fuel use also improves local air quality, by reducing emissions of noxious gases such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, various hydrocarbons, and metals such as mercury and cadmium, which are released into the air by burning coal. Young children and elderly people are especially vulnerable to lung diseases caused or aggravated by these substances. And some of these substances may cause cancer.
Finally, local authorities can make a difference by joining together, as some have through ICLEI's Cities for Climate Protection. The 100 municipalities from around the world that have joined the campaign emit about 600 megatonnes (660 megatons) of CO2 emissions (in the form of carbon) in total annually, representing close to 10% of the total global CO2 emissions. By acting together, these local authorities will significantly reduce greenhouse gases globally.
Why Act Now?
In 1994 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (also called the Climate Treaty) came into full legal force. In March 1995 the governing body for the Convention, the Conference of the Parties (COP), held its first meeting (COP 1) in Berlin. The cornerstone of the Climate Treaty is the pledge industrial countries have made to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases around the year 2000 to the level they were at in 1990. The Climate Treaty does not legally bind the signatories to specific targets and timetables, though each nation is required to publicly report its progress towards meeting the goals of the Climate Treaty.Local authorities should act now to assist their national governments in meeting their commitments under the Climate Treaty. Their leadership is vitally needed, timely, and can make a difference! Some are already playing an important role to fight global warming, especially those who have adopted the Toronto target of 20% CO2 reduction and who have invested in energy- efficient and renewable energy measures that lower greenhouse gas emissions. These local authorities are sending the valuable message to state, provincial, and national governments that fighting global warming is profitable to the local economy and improves community livability.
Local authorities in the United States and Canada - the same group of municipal politicians that later founded ICLEI! - catalyzed public support for the Montreal Ozone Protocol in the 1980s and national policy stemming from it, by passing ordinances banning CFCs from their cities.
National governments again today need the help of local authorities in creating greater public support for their climate action plans to meet their UN commitments. According to a recent report of the International Energy Agency, only Germany and the United Kingdom are likely to meet their stabilization targets by 2000. By 2010, only countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are likely to stabilize their emissions at 1990 levels, largely due to the collapse of industrial energy use after the fall of Communist regimes there.
In many countries, the levers to influence local energy demand are held by local authorities. Through partnerships and mutual support, local authorities working with their national governments can lead to effective policies, programs, and projects.
Berlin Communiqué
Finally, the time is right for action. On the occasion of COP 1, ICLEI sponsored the Second Municipal Leaders' Summit on Climate Change in Berlin. Participants at the Summit delivered a CommuniquŽ to the COP that asked it:- to permit local authorities, as distinct from other sectors, to officially consult with the COP on scientific and technical matters, as well as on implementation of the Climate Treaty;
- to endorse the establishment of a Local Authority Climate Assembly to facilitate municipal advice to the COP;
- to include local authority representation on key COP advisory bodies;
- to implement the "Draft Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction," proposed by the Alliance of Small Island States;
- to specially recognize local authorities that seek to reduce their emissions by 20% or more through ICLEI's Cities for Climate Protection Campaign.
Further action by local authorities on climate change, therefore, will bolster their credibility and influence ultimately in the UN's official deliberations over the next few years, thereby encouraging the COP to positively act on the recommendations made by the CommuniquŽ.
What Follows?
Saving the Climate - Saving the Cities introduces municipal leaders to:- the science of global warming;
- the potential ecological and public health effects of global warming on cities, towns, and villages;
- sustainable urban energy use; and
- the Local Action Plan - a municipal strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While this third edition updates the science and the potential effects of global warming, it also seeks to appeal to an audience that is broader than North America and Europe. Some specific sections from the original edition that are region- specific are omitted here. (The second edition should continue to serve as a valuable reference for local authorities in those specific regions, especially Europe.)
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