Posts tagged with 'health'
Amidst Record-breaking Fires, Will Brazil Confront Its Climate Challenges?
Amidst Record-breaking Fires, Will Brazil Confront Its Climate Challenges?
Brazilians are currently living in a dystopian landscape. Thick smoke, oppressive heat and eerily orange sunsets blanket both major cities and small villages. Hundreds of cities are exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution while thousands of hectares of forest burn. ...
Building for People: Towards an Equitable Transition in the Built Environment
Building for People: Towards an Equitable Transition in the Built Environment
The built environment is not on track globally to achieve its sectoral climate targets. Accounting for over a third of total energy system emissions already, the continued use of carbon-intensive materials paired with inefficient energy use throughout the built environment ...
E-Tricycles Are Powering a Recycling Revolution in Fortaleza, Brazil
E-Tricycles Are Powering a Recycling Revolution in Fortaleza, Brazil
Rafaela Aires’s workday starts at 9:00 a.m., leading her down city streets that weave past the Atlantic shoreline and under concrete overpasses. Her collected bottles and cardboard boxes used to form heaps in a hand-drawn cart. Now, they rattle in ...
6 Takeaways From Indore’s New Air Quality Monitoring Stations
6 Takeaways From Indore’s New Air Quality Monitoring Stations
Research around the world shows that pollution levels can vary enormously within the same city and even within the same neighborhood. Local monitoring data can thus prove essential to understanding air pollution sources, how they affect different communities and groups, ...
Oslo’s ‘Climate Budget’ Is Building a Cleaner City
Oslo’s ‘Climate Budget’ Is Building a Cleaner City
In the stylish Grünerløkka neighborhood in Oslo, construction workers are busy rehabilitating Sophies Minde, an old medical clinic, into a new nursery school and maternal health center. Tidy piles of building materials along the perimeter of the construction site wait ...
Grassroots Action Against Polluted Skies: How Jakarta's Urban Villages Tackle Air Pollution 
Grassroots Action Against Polluted Skies: How Jakarta’s Urban Villages Tackle Air Pollution 
On a Sunday afternoon in September 2023, a group of about 30 individuals, including a group of mostly female neighbors from nine kampungs (a common term for “urban villages” or “informal settlements” across multiple languages and nations in Southeast Asia) ...
The Impacts of El Niño Go Far Beyond Water
The Impacts of El Niño Go Far Beyond Water
Over the past several months, the climate pattern El Niño has disrupted different regions and sectors across the world. Zimbabwe recently declared a state of disaster, due largely to El Niño-induced drought. The city government in Bogotá, Colombia, announced water rationing as reservoir levels ...
How Improved Housing in Under-Served Communities Can Strengthen Climate Resilience
How Improved Housing in Under-Served Communities Can Strengthen Climate Resilience
In the crowded slums of Zambia, Africa, members of the Zambia Youth Federation, a social movement of the urban poor, conducted climate change research and presented it in an emotional spoken word poem. Their message let policymakers know how climate ...
India’s Shift to Low-Carbon Construction Must Not Leave Workers Behind
India’s Shift to Low-Carbon Construction Must Not Leave Workers Behind
India aims to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 45% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. The country can’t achieve either goal without a radical transformation in its buildings and construction sector, which was responsible for around 17% of the nation’s ...
Delhi’s Air Quality Needs Data-Driven Action
Delhi’s Air Quality Needs Data-Driven Action
The issue of Delhi’s poor air quality resurfaces periodically in public consciousness. It garners attention on social media, in newspapers and in scientific studies, largely during winter months. During this period, Delhi’s air quality index drops from “poor” to “severe” ...
Southeast Asian Cities Have Some of the Most Polluted Air in the World. El Niño Is Making it Worse
Southeast Asian Cities Have Some of the Most Polluted Air in the World. El Niño Is Making it Worse
Residents of Jakarta, Indonesia woke up on August 31, 2023, to a thick blanket of haze and news that their city was again ranked the most polluted in the world — one of many times during the last several months when air quality became ...
The Future of Extreme Heat in Cities: What We Know — and What We Don’t
The Future of Extreme Heat in Cities: What We Know — and What We Don’t
The past year registered record-shattering global temperatures. People around the world are already witnessing epic heat waves, wildfires and drought at 1.1 degrees C (2 degrees F) of global warming, compared to pre-industrial averages. With current policies putting the world on ...
Nairobi Highlights Air Quality During Africa Climate Week
Nairobi Highlights Air Quality During Africa Climate Week
Against the backdrop of the Africa Climate Summit and Africa Climate Week, Nairobi hosted the UN Environment Programme’s fourth annual International Clean Air Day for blue skies event with Nairobi City County Governor, Sakaja Johnson, on September 7th, 2023. This ...
How the US Can Electrify Its Public Fleets, from City Buses to Garbage Trucks
How the US Can Electrify Its Public Fleets, from City Buses to Garbage Trucks
Public vehicle fleets, which include everything from city buses and school buses to garbage trucks and law enforcement vehicles, make up a significant share of traffic on U.S. roads. There are 645,000 vehicles in the federal fleet, 500,000 in state fleets across the ...
Big and Small Steps to Beat the Heat
Big and Small Steps to Beat the Heat
It’s an island no one in their right mind wants to be on, but sadly many of us increasingly find ourselves due to global warming. “Heat islands” are a concept British climatologist Gordon Manley came up with way back in ...
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