Boyd Cohen2013-05-21T15:43:02-04:00Boyd Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=boyd-cohenCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Boyd CohenGood old fashioned elbow grease.Globally Resilient City Number 7: San Franciscotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9126482011-08-01T15:19:18-04:002011-10-01T05:12:01-04:00Boyd Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/boyd-cohen/resilient cities, around the globe, starting with the top 10 cities from my global ranking. Last week I highlighted number eight, New York. Next up, San Francisco.
A few months ago I conducted similar research on U.S. cities only, and not surprisingly San Francisco was number one. San Francisco is doing a lot of things well including demonstrating substantial political commitment to climate action. San Francisco has a published climate action plan, is a member of the Clinton C40 initiative and ICLEI and is participating in the Carbon War Room's Green Capital Global Challenge.
San Francisco is doing plenty to mitigate the effects of climate change. Unfortunately I could not keep the green building ranking in the global study because there is insufficient data from other green building certification groups outside of the Green Building Councils in North America and BREEAM in the U.K.. San Francisco has the highest number of LEED certified buildings/capita in the U.S. San Francisco did however score well on some key metrics in the global study including having one of the more aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets (20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 and 80 per cent reduction by 2050). San Francisco is among the first cities working to introduce a group purchasing program for solar energy.
San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has a ridership of more than 100 million annually, demonstration project to introduce hybrid wind and solar LED street lights.
In October of 2010, in partnership with San Jose and the EV infrastructure pioneer, Better Place, San Francisco announced plans to introduce an EV taxi fleet which would be among the first in North America.
Beyond those innovations announced last year, San Francisco had been working for years on plans for one of the largest brownfield redevelopment projects in North America converting a toxic old Navy shipyard into a world-class sustainable mixed-use development.
"The city's redevelopment plan calls for the transformation of a toxic, abandoned 700-plus acre parcel into thousands of housing units and businesses that will be powered by clean energy, while integrating the area into the ecologically significant San Francisco Bay."
While San Francisco is doing quite a bit to shift to a low-carbon economy it still has plenty of room for improvement. For example San Francisco has the highest per capita emissions of all the cities in my top 10 rankings (10.1 tons of GHGs/capita).
Of course when discussing resilient cities, one must consider what adaptation challenges a city is facing and what is the city doing to prepare for a changing climate. A recently released study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) highlighted the 12 cities in the U.S. with the highest vulnerabilities to the changing climate. Unfortunately for San Francisco it made that ranking too. Of nine metrics the NRDC measured, San Francisco was considered at high risk for five of them including: sea-level rise, flooding, water supply issues, increased erosion and increased saltwater intrusion.
All cities around the globe are facing the risk of some kind of climate change impacts whether it be too much water from storm events to too little water from droughts and of course food shortages. A resilient city is one that understands the risks and adequately develops strategies and implements actions to minimize the risks. In conducting my research on San Francisco's resilience, I was surprised to see how much work they are doing to assess the current and future risks related to food security. We all know that developing countries and communities in Africa, like Somalia are already facing tragic drought and food shortages. But San Francisco? In their recently released report: "Hunger and Food Insecurity on the Rise in San Francisco", the 2009 U.S. census estimates that 11 per cent of its population is living in poverty. But like all challenges we face, the first step is to admit you have a problem, which San Francisco is doing.
However given the vulnerabilities to climate change identified in the NRDC report, and having read their climate action plan, San Francisco has a lot of work ahead of it to identify these other vulnerabilities and to develop action plans for minimizing the risks climate change will pose on its population and its infrastructure.
What is your city doing about climate change?
]]>Globally Resilient City Number 8: New Yorktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9061052011-07-25T12:53:02-04:002011-09-24T05:12:01-04:00Boyd Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/boyd-cohen/resilient cities, around the globe, starting with the top 10 cities from my global ranking. Last week I highlighted number nine, London. Next up, New York.
I considered the political commitment of cities to be of utmost importance in my ranking. Without a committed mayor and leadership group it is highly unlikely a city will make meaningful progress on climate policy and action. I used six proxies for political commitment ranging from having a published climate action plan to be members of key cities groups committed to climate action such as C40 and ICLEI. New York scored quite highly, missing only one membership, the World Mayors Council on Climate Change. Of significant importance, mayor Michael Bloomberg is the current Chair of the Clinton Foundation's C40 initiative.
"There is no single solution for solving global climate change and President Clinton and I agree that one of the most efficient methods of reducing carbon emissions is to focus on large cities around the world," Mayor Bloomberg said.
I can not overstate the importance of mayor Bloomberg's leadership in the C40, especially because of his status as a successful conservative business leader and mayor. He is showing that climate action is not a red or blue issue and playing a key role in uniting some of the largest cities in implementing climate solutions.
Of course when considering climate mitigation, transit related emissions are important. Cities with robust rail networks are at an advantage as populations grow as well as the price of oil. New York City has the most used metro system in North America and the sixth most in the world behind Tokyo, Moscow, Seoul, Shanghai and Beijing. While we are talking about transit, let's hope NYC makes the transition with the 13,000 new Nissan NV200's taxi fleet to EVs as promised by 2017.
In conducting the global rankings I was unfortunately unable to include a ranking of green buildings in each city because I could not source comparative data across the globe. However, New York City has been making a significant shift towards greener, lower carbon footprint buildings. There are currently 133 LEED certified green buildings in New York City. The 92 acre Battery Park City put NYC on the global map for asserting a LEED Gold and Platinum minimum for all its buildings.
Of course when discussing resilient cities, one must consider what adaptation challenges a city faces and what the city is doing to prepare for a changing climate. New York City, like many other megacities in the world has a relatively low elevation, which poses a risk for seal level rises. This is because portions of the city, especially Manhattan are only about five feet above the mean sea level. Sea level rise through glacier melt combined with increased frequency and intensity of storms could pose major flooding risks to lower-level areas of the city.
According to an important recent report on resilient cities, "the possibility of inundation during coastal storms (in New York City" is greatly enhanced with the projected effects of sea-level rise."
My resilient cities rankings took into account what cities are planning to do regarding adapting to a changing climate. New York City scored amongst the highest in my study on this metric due to the integration of adaptation into its development permitting process. Many of the existing Department of Environmental Protection initiatives "for addressing current climate extremes, environmental regulations, aging infrastructure, and population growth are also adapting DEP's systems for climate change."
Relatedly, a resilient city best practice is to expand green and park space throughout the city. This allows for the sequestration of carbon (mitigation) as well as reducing stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect (adaptation). New York City scored highest in my rankings on park space with 28,000 acres and fourth overall on park space/capita.
While the federal government in the U.S. is stuck in partisan politics, many U.S. cities are showing leadership on climate action. New York City, led by its conservator mayor, has become one of the global megacities doing the most to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
]]>Globally Resilient City Number 9: Londontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8933642011-07-15T09:45:10-04:002011-09-14T05:12:01-04:00Boyd Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/boyd-cohen/resilient cities, around the globe, starting with the top 10 cities from my global ranking. Last week I highlighted number 10, Tokyo. Next up, London.
In order for cities to get past the first screen, they had to demonstrate a minimum amount of political commitment and leadership towards resiliency. In the case of London, that included having a published climate action plan (CAP). Like Tokyo, London is a member of the C40 and ICLEI. Additionally, London is also participating in Richard Branson's Carbon War Room Green Capital Global Challenge.
According to CityMayors.com, London actually ranks number one of all cities in my study on density. While debates continue about whether increased density is always a good thing for resiliency, I personally believe that density with smart urban planning and transit is a key strategy for resiliency on a global scale as our population balloons to nine billion. Obviously other factors regarding food security need to be addressed which I did not capture in the 2011 rankings.
And of course London has a fantastic transit system. Aside from having the fourth most rail transit users of any city in my study, London of course gets props for introducing the controversial but bold congestion zone.
Besides the GHG reductions, the congestion zone generates increased revenue for public transit and is now serving to encourage greener vehicle purchases by exempting them from paying anything at all.
London also scored high points by being an early mover in adaptation. The Thames Barrier, operational since 1982 is the second largest movable flood barrier in the world. The Barrier "protects 125 square kilometers of central London from flooding caused by tidal surges."
Like all cities, London has plenty of room for improvement. For example, London's GHG emissions per capita are 6.2 tons compared with a low of 2.1 tons/capita for Curitiba and Copenhagen.
Also according to my research, only about 10 per cent of London's electricity comes from renewables, compared to Vancouver which has about 90 per cent clean or renewable electricity. Having said that London is doing many things quite well, and in my study are one of the leaders in embracing adaptation from the Barrier to the integration of adaptation planning into their Climate Action Plan. London, despite some evidence to the contrary, is trying to host the Greenest Olympics ever in 2012.
In the coming weeks and months I will be highlighting the remaining Top 10 cities and best practices from around the globe. In the meantime, to learn more, please join ICLEI's President David Cadman and I for a webinar on resilient cities.
]]>Globally Resilient City Number 10: Tokyotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8900182011-07-06T07:51:46-04:002011-09-05T05:12:01-04:00Boyd Cohenhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/boyd-cohen/I published the results of my research on what some of the top cities in the world are doing to mitigate and adapt to climate change. While the U.S. is stuck in bi-partisan bickering, and Canada is happy to do nothing while it waits for the U.S. to act, climate change is already wreaking havoc on communities around the globe from flooding to droughts and food insecurity. Rather than wait for federal and multi-lateral policy, thousands of cities around the globe have decided to step up.
Good timing, since cities have only recently achieved an important milestone -- more than 50 per cent of the world's population now lives in them (on their way to 60 per cent by 2030). And cities are where most of us live, transit, work, eat and play, which is why they account for nearly 80 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Luckily city leaders have numerous tools at their disposal that can help them mitigate and adapt to a changing climate. These include transportation policies and infrastructure, building codes, parks, land use planning, protection of nearby agricultural land, community gardens, energy policy, infrastructure and much more.
In this series, I will be reviewing best practices in mitigating and adapting to climate change in cities, also known as resilient cities, around the globe, starting with the top 10 cities from my global ranking. First up, Tokyo, coming it at number 10.
In order for cities to get past the first screen, they had to demonstrate a minimum amount of political commitment and leadership towards resiliency. In the case of Tokyo, that included having a published climate action plan (CAP). Tokyo is also a member of an elite group of megacities committed to combating climate change initiated by former president Bill Clinton, known as the C40.
Finally, Tokyo is a member of a global network of cities committed to sustainability known as ICLEI (more on them later). Naturally, fractions of the Tea Party oppose the ICLEI because it believes that ICLEI wants to force its agenda of sustainable, resilient cities on citizens around the globe. Heaven forbid our cities became more transit-oriented, less dependent on fossil fuels, more food secure and more resilient to climate change!
Of course Tokyo, like all the other cities that made the ranking has much to improve upon, including the need to embrace more ambitious GHG reduction targets (currently their stated goal is a 25 per cent reduction of their own city operations by 2020). In comparison, Copenhagen, which scored top honours in this year's overall ranking, aspires to reach full community carbon neutrality by 2025.
Another area for improvement relates to climate adaptation. Recent research has found that many leading cities around the globe are starting to take positive action to reduce their carbon footprint but few cities are proactively working to flexibly adapt to a changing climate. Of the cities I studied in this research, Tokyo scored among the lowest in my rankings in its planning and actions to adapt to future impacts of climate change.
However one of the unique innovations coming from Tokyo was the introduction of their own emission trading system (ETS). This program requires the metropolitan area's 1,400 largest emitters to achieve a 6 per cent reduction in emissions by 2014. They can achieve this through a combination of process efficiencies, the purchase of renewable energy credits and offsets (maximum of one-third of the offsets can be sourced from projects outside the region).
So while we in North America are still waiting for a cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax, or really anything to put some kind of price on carbon or incentive to reduce emissions, Tokyo is already taking positive strides. One last positive, from my perspective at least, with respect to Tokyo's resilience efforts, is that the city is placing additional emphasis on encouraging profitable industry response, something I like to refer to as "climate capitalism." The first initiative in Tokyo's climate action plan is to "Promote private enterprises' efforts to achieve CO2 reductions." If cities are going to become resilient fast enough they will have to engage the private sector.
In the coming weeks and months I will be highlighting the remaining top 10 cities and best practices from around the globe. In the meantime, to learn more, please join ICLEI's President David Cadman and I for a webinar on resilient cities on July 13.