For some reason, cities all over Europe are taking concrete action to adapt to our changing climate. Solutions also seem to provide quality-of-life enhancements to those cities. It’s not just nature who wins. Comments afterwards.
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91% of Europe’s cities are looking
to nature-based solutions to
fight climate change
By Rosie Frost
Euro.Green
29 April, 2024
Cities are home to a majority of Europe’s population and are
particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change.
Europe’s cities are facing the impacts of climate change ever more regularly and severely. After 2023’s record summer heat, flooding and heatwaves, the need to invest in resilience has never been clearer.
A new report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) has taken stock of adaption across Europe’s urban centres, looking at what actions cities are taking and what is already working.
It finds that almost all European cities are using nature-based solutions as their tool of choice to improve resilience. Of the 19,000 climate action plans surveyed, 91 per cent included options like maintaining parks, urban forests or green roofs and facilitating natural water retention.
Not only are they “effective for cooling and water retention”, the report says, they also provide other benefits like more recreational spaces or a reduction in pollution.
Despite the uptake in nature-based solutions, however, the EEA says the magnitude of expected climate impacts means it may still be necessary to combine them with other types of actions, including physical infrastructure. And concrete targets are desperately needed to make sure Europe’s urban centres stay on track.
Which European cities are adapting well?
Ine Vandecasteele, an expert on urban adaptation at the EEA, says …
“Capital and larger cities are usually front-
runners as they have great financial and
technical capacities to work on adaptation,
and may even be more ambitious than
the national level on climate action.
“However, it is not only larger cities
that are taking good initiatives.”
She points to a few that stick out for their efforts. Ghent in Belgium, for example, has an ambitious greening strategy and is already limiting the construction of new buildings. Even if they are approved there is a ‘net-zero’ requirement that means an equal area of the city needs to be unpaved or converted back to green space.
Nantes in France is investing in becoming one of Europe’s greenest cities while still trying to remain affordable for residents. Rethymno, a coastal town in Greece, is investing in bioclimatic design in its public spaces, using compressed soil, permeable pavers and paint to effectively reduce maximum air temperature during heatwaves.
“On the flipside, smaller municipalities may
need additional support from the regional
and national level to be able to develop and
implement effective adaptation strategies.
In a good example of how to overcome these
limitations from Piedmont, Italy, smaller
municipalities are banding together
to apply for funding.”
Though adaption needs to be tailored to the specific impacts felt in each city, Vandecasteele says similar places can learn a lot from each other.
“For example in tackling increasing
heatwaves in southern European cities, or
greater variability in rainfall and storms
in western and northern Europe. There is a
strong need for networking and peer-learning
– best practices can and need to be shared.”
Adaptation, she says, also needs the support of citizens who should be involved in every step of the process.
Why do Europe’s cities need to adapt?
The EEA published the first-ever European climate risk assessment in March this year. It shows that current policies and adaptation actions aren’t keeping pace with rapidly growing climate risks – and urban areas are at particular risk from heatwaves and heavy rain.
Europe is the fastest warming continent with temperatures rising at roughly twice the rate of the global average. Almost three-quarters of the continent’s population is estimated to live in urban areas and cities can often be up to 10 to 15C hotter than the surrounding land.
With more to lose from the consequences of the world’s changing climate and a large section of the population to protect, the report highlights the “urgent need” to adapt European cities to climate change.
Cities need specific targets for climate adaptation
If actions taken at a local level are to be properly upscaled then tangible goals and specific targets are needed to measure progress, the report adds. Right now, there are none at national or European levels. Vandecasteele explains …
“Targets set by cities could be quite specific,
for example ensuring that as much as pos-
sible of the population is covered by specific
insurance where needed, that housing meets
certain minimum energy efficiency standards,
that rainwater is separated from greywater
collection for all individual houses, or that all
citizens have publicly accessible green spaces
within a short walk of where they are living.”
“These are needed. But so is a better definition
of what the overall goal is, further than ‘en-
hancing resilience’, so that actions can be
upscaled and mainstreamed towards a
more specific common goal.”
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I like some of the urban solutions cited. For example, new buildings having to have a “‘net-zero’ requirement that means an equal area of the city needs to be unpaved or converted back to green space.“ The requirement reinforces the transition of thinking for all new buildings, so that architects, engineers and developers will be required to comply. And a greener city does provide better quality-of-life experience opportunities for its residents; a win-win approach.
The article does not mention car emissions, which is a major contributor to the problem. However, when I was in Norway, over two years ago, they had already become roughly 50% e-car, in auto traffic. Streets were quieter and air cleaner. Adding D’s comments …
“Every community can take ideas from the larger cities. And all communities need to be doing something. The easiest thing to do is plant trees. There is a need for changing requirements for builders, be it in housing or commercial structures. Some ideas for buildings could be requiring solar panels, tree planting, eliminating grass lawns, or requiring permeable surfaces. There is much that even a small community can require of its citizens and its businesses.
“In larger cities, zones – such as central business districts – can exclude fossil fuel powered vehicles. London has already done this. Such efforts provide added incentive for people to transition to e-cars.”