Do cities have the institutional capacity to address climate change?
Patricia Romero Lankao
National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA
Daniel M. Gnatz
Environmental Writer, USA
Urban areas are both climate change hotspots and the seedbeds of experiments and solutions that may help avoid or moderate some of the worst predicted climate change impacts. Cities are estimated to be responsible for between 71 to 75% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and their concentrations of populations, economic activities and infrastructure create heightened risks from heatwaves, floods, sea level rise and other impacts that climate change will aggravate (see Figure 1). Yet urban areas are also the source of many potential solutions to these issues and are developing alternative housing experiments, renewable energy options, cooling roofs and other mitigation and adaptation innovations and experiments to address climate change.
Figure 1: The hazard risk of each city represents a cumulative score based on risk of cyclones, flooding, landslides and drought (De Sherbinin and Romero…
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