Cities around the globe have a unique and powerful role to play in mitigating climate change and adapting to its impacts. Estimates suggest that urban activities produce 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, making them major contributors to climate change. Yet their growing populations are also extremely vulnerable to climate change, with climate change-induced heat waves, floods, storms and sea level rise, disrupting their basic services, infrastructure, housing, livelihoods and health. As wellsprings of ideas, innovation, and resources, cities are also potential sources of solutions for addressing climate change.
The prominence of this civic role is prompting many universities and cities like the Canadian city of Toronto and the city of Nottingham in the UK to set bold carbon reduction targets (e.g., net zero by 2050 or sooner like 2028 for Nottingham) that align with the Paris Agreements’ recommendations for keeping global heating below 1.5C as well as identifying resiliency measures for adaptation. In the words of Toronto’s climate strategy: “Achieving these targets will require transformational changes in how we live, work, commute, and build”. It will require Herculean effort across the wide array of sectors, industries and levels of government that shape the urban environment. “
The UKs Civic Universities Network (https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/ ) and the Urban Climate Action Network (UCAN) in the US and Canada (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/urban-climate-action-network-joe-harber/ ) offer tangible evidence that the expertise and capacities of universities can be brought to the table by developing university/city partnerships focused on how cities can best achieve their climate targets. The vision for such a partnership is one of civic symbiosis which leverages the unique capabilities of the university (e.g., students, faculty, research, campus infrastructure) to help the City achieve its climate goals, while university students – future generations of architects, planners, engineers, policy analysts, communications specialists, investments analysts and cultural and social innovators- would become better versed in the concepts and practice of sustainability and climate action.
In the UK- Nottingham is arguably the furthest ahead. The city has reduced its overall CO2 emissions per capita by 52.3% since 2005 and is on track to be carbon neutral by 2028. It has planted nearly 22,000 trees and installed more than 130 public electric vehicle charging points. Just under a third of council vehicles and nearly half of Hackney carriage taxis are ultra-low emission vehicles, and the city has one of the UK’s largest fleets of electric buses. A workplace parking levy on employers providing 11 or more parking spaces for staff generates about £8m a year, which is ringfenced for renewable transport schemes. It also hosts two of the world’s leading universities which are implementing sustainability across their campuses and across their courses.
For many universities there is a growing understanding that instead of the prevailing siloed curriculum approaches to sustainability, there needs to be an emphasis on influencing individual behaviour and markets. Hence, teaching which is rooted in the day-to-day interaction of social, economic, and environmental systems, and inseparable from issues of social and environmental justice and of governance-would offer a more grounded learning experience. To understand fully the complex interactions which continue to promote unsustainable practices, an emphasis on the real-world lens of ‘place’ can bring together a wide range of academic disciplines – Geography, Biology and Ecology, Economics and Marketing, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Earth Science and Philosophy. This could facilitate a critical search of finding ways to work together across very different disciplinary approaches and methods, using the reality of physical places, with all their complexity and ‘messiness’.
The world’s urban buildings, including homes, workplaces, schools, and hospitals, are responsible for a significant proportion of global carbon emissions. By 2050, 1.6 billion people living in cities will be regularly exposed to extremely high temperatures and over 800 million people living in cities across the world will be vulnerable to sea level rises and coastal flooding. Accelerating the transition to net zero emissions for the world’s cities will therefore be vital to achieving the goal of keeping global warming to close to 1.5 degrees.
By 2050 urban areas will be home to two thirds of the world population, with the speed and scale of urbanisation set to lock in high-carbon infrastructure and inequality if we do not act now.
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