Posts tagged with 'Cities4Forests'
The Best Defense Against 'Natural' Disasters Is Nature Itself
The Best Defense Against ‘Natural’ Disasters Is Nature Itself
I’ve watched in horror as Europe burns. Ferocious wildfires have swept through Spain, France and now Greece, scorching towns and forests and spewing toxic smoke. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes. Many will have little left to return to. European ...
Tackling Central Africa's Water and Power Challenges Starts With Restoring Nature
Tackling Central Africa’s Water and Power Challenges Starts With Restoring Nature
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits where Lake Kivu drains into the Ruzizi River along the border with Rwanda. The city’s steep hillsides turn heavy rains into fast-moving runoff that overwhelms drains, damages roads and threatens downstream communities. It’s ...
Utah Pioneers a New Model for Wildfire Resilience
Utah Pioneers a New Model for Wildfire Resilience
Twenty years ago, the forested slopes above Alpine Acres — a small community at the source of the Weber River in Summit County, Utah — were overgrown with dry brush and primed for wildfire. With only one road in and ...
Tangible Insights: Planning for Resilience With Physical Maps
Tangible Insights: Planning for Resilience With Physical Maps
In most urban planning meetings, stakeholder engagement begins and ends with presentations. Data is shared, reports are circulated and challenges are discussed. This format often misses fostering the hands-on participation needed to tackle the local realities of climate change.  What ...
Meet CityMetrics: An Open-Source, Interactive Tool for Analyzing Urban Risks and Opportunities
Meet CityMetrics: An Open-Source, Interactive Tool for Analyzing Urban Risks and Opportunities
Which neighborhoods are suffering the most from rising urban heat? Where is flooding the biggest challenge? What other cities around the world are struggling with air pollution, and what can we learn from those that have improved the quality of ...
New Tool Helps Cities Select and Scale Nature-Based Solutions
New Tool Helps Cities Select and Scale Nature-Based Solutions
As cities try to restore the benefits of natural systems by mimicking how ecosystems function, one option they can use is nature-based solutions (NBS). However, cities often struggle to determine which types of interventions best suit their local context, due ...
How African Cities Can Be More Green, Resilient and Inclusive
How African Cities Can Be More Green, Resilient and Inclusive
Looking at more than 350 urban leaders and experts gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, for the Green & Resilient UrbanShift Africa Forum, Dr. Cromwel Lukorito, Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II, issued a simple ...
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Nature-Based Solutions Take Root
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Nature-Based Solutions Take Root
For the 21 million residents of Lagos, Nigeria, climate change is not a distant concept — it is a current reality. Over the past decade, the city has experienced devastating floods, exacerbated by the loss of over half of its wetlands ...
Rebuilding Kenya Stronger: Here's What's Needed to Rebound After Catastrophic Floods
Rebuilding Kenya Stronger: Here’s What’s Needed to Rebound After Catastrophic Floods
In Kenya and throughout east Africa, flooding this past April and May wreaked havoc, leaving a path of deadly destruction. The unprecedented deluge of heavy rainfall resulted in a catastrophe that many in Kenya have never witnessed. According to a June ...
As Water Shortages Plague Bogotá and Other Cities, Nature-Based Solutions Can Help
As Water Shortages Plague Bogotá and Other Cities, Nature-Based Solutions Can Help
Bogotá, Colombia is in the throes of a water crisis. After several months of dry weather caused by El Niño, the Chingaza reservoir system, which provides 70% of Bogotá’s water, reached its lowest level in history. The city’s over 8 million residents are ...
Natural Infrastructure: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Supply Clean Water to Bogotá
Natural Infrastructure: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Supply Clean Water to Bogotá
The Guacheneque Páramo, where the Bogotá River originates, represents the second largest source of drinking water for the city of Bogotá, Colombia. It is a key ecosystem that supplies water to approximately 25% of the city’s 7 million inhabitants. However, due to ...
Pink City to Green City: Building Jaipur’s Climate Resilience Through Nature-Based Solutions
Pink City to Green City: Building Jaipur’s Climate Resilience Through Nature-Based Solutions
India experienced almost one extreme weather event per day in the first nine months of 2022. And the state of Rajasthan is no stranger to this phenomenon, with its capital city, Jaipur, ranking 22nd on the Global Climate Vulnerability Index. ...
How Africa’s First Chief Heat Officer Is Helping to Create a More Resilient Freetown
How Africa’s First Chief Heat Officer Is Helping to Create a More Resilient Freetown
“Climate change is affecting cities all around the world, and Freetown is no exception.” That’s what Eugenia Kargbo, Freetown’s Chief Heat Officer, told UrbanShift during the City Academy hosted in Kigali last year. Through her role—the first of its kind in ...
As the Earth Gets Hotter, Can Our Cities Get Cooler?
As the Earth Gets Hotter, Can Our Cities Get Cooler?
This summer the Northern Hemisphere has been so hot with record temperatures — including at sea — that discussions have turned to the limits of human survival. Even in the Antarctic, sea ice is failing to re-form, a drastic departure ...
New Data Dashboard Helps Cities Build Urban Resilience in a Changing Climate
New Data Dashboard Helps Cities Build Urban Resilience in a Changing Climate
Climate change is impacting cities and their residents in many profound ways, from poor air quality to flooding to biodiversity loss and extreme heat. Now, with the help of a new tool, select cities can access localized, integrated data to ...
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