The rest of Europe lags behind the UK in preparing cities for climate change
The UK is leading Europe in terms of the number of cities that have climate change mitigation or adaptation plans, according to a new study. But one in three European cities has no plan whatsoever in place for coping with a changing climate.
Major players
Global temperatures have risen by 0.85 degrees over the industrial era – and cities have had a large part to play in that warming. Research suggests cities are currently responsible for more than 70 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Cities are also considered at high risk from climate change impacts, such as extreme weather and flooding, because they cram a lot of people into a small area, support vital infrastructure and contain valuable commercial assets.
But a new study suggests more than a third of European cities are unprepared for climate change, with neither a plan in place to reduce emissions nor to cope with the expected impacts.
Where did the story come from?
The findings come from a new paper just published in the journal Climatic Change. The large team of 12 authors hail from the US, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Ireland, France, Sweden, Estonia and Italy.
Lead author, Dr Diana Reckien, carried out the research while a visiting scholar at the Centre for Environmental Decisions, part of Colombia University in New York.
What did the research involve?
The researchers set out to examine the state of climate change adaptation and mitigation planning in Europe’s cities, looking in detail at a representative sample of 200 large and medium-sized cities in 11 countries.
The 11 cities chosen covered nearly 17 per cent of the population of the EU, of which 27 countries were member states at the time of the study.
The authors say the new study is the first of its kind in that it objectively analyses policy documents rather than relying on self-assessment by city representatives. Previous research in this area has typically been carried out through questionnaires and interviews.
The team analysed strategic policy and planning documents from each city, looking for existing or proposed actions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or to increase their resilience through urban planning and development, for example.
Image - Reckien _map (note)
A map showing climate change plans and emission reduction targets for 195 of the 200 cities studied. The biggest proportion of cities with climate plans are in the UK. Source: Reckien et al., ( 2013)
What were the key results?
The researchers found 65 per cent of cities – 130 out of 200 – had a plan of some description in place to mitigate climate change. Most plans involved renewable energy generation, energy efficiency and energy saving measures and were focused on specific sectors, such as improving bike lanes, building insulation or efficient heating systems.
Of the mitigation plans, 88 per cent included a specific target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, applied to the urban area as a whole, the city administration or certain economic sectors. None of the mitigation strategies looked past 2050, however.
The research showed far fewer of the cities studied had adaptation plans in place, just 28 per cent. Less than a third had both a mitigation and an adaptation plan. The authors say in the paper:
“In 22 per cent of all cities studied, the mitigation and adaptation actions are integrated into a joint strategy (predominantly in the UK, Finland and France), which increases the likelihood of integration and consideration of possible trade-offs and feedbacks between adaptation and mitigation plans.”
Image - Reckien _topics (note)
The most frequently mentioned topics in cities’ mitigation plans (top graph) and adaptation plans (bottom graph). Source: Reckien et al., ( 2013)
Just 25 per cent of cities had both types of plan and specified an emissions reduction target. The authors considered these cities “climate leaders”. One in three cities had no plan at all, the research showed.
How did the researchers interpret the results
Different countries vary extensively in scope and ambition towards climate change planning, say the researchers. Of the countries studied, the UK appears to be leading the way with the highest proportion of cities with mitigation plans.
In the UK, 93 per cent of the cities studied have a mitigation plan compared to 43 per cent of French cities and 42 per cent of Belgian cities, according to the figures.
The UK is also leading the rest of Europe in adaptation planning, with a plan in place in 80 per cent of the 30 cities studied. In Germany, 33 per cent of the 40 cities studied had adaptation plans.
The study also notes that Dutch cities have the most ambitious climate mitigation targets, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050 or earlier. The research also showed many capital cities had ambitious targets relative to other cities, but not all countries with national targets had targets covering all their cities too.
Scaling up the results from the cities studied implies the EU is on course to achieve its commitment to reducing emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. The authors say in the paper:
“[Our results] show that if the planned actions within cities are nationally representative the 11 countries investigated would achieve a 37 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, translating into a 27 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the EU as a whole.”
These results are encouraging but not sufficient to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, say the researchers. According to their results, the EU is set to fall short of a 85 to 90 per cent reduction by 2050, the additional target endorsed by EU leaders to avoid reaching the politically-accepted limit of two degrees warming above pre-industrial levels.
Looking forward
As demonstrated by the UNFCCC negotiations in Warsaw in recent weeks, progress on mitigating climate change at the international level is hampered by difficult and deep rooted problems, such as division of responsibility between developed and developing nations.
The authors of the new study argue there is considerably more power and freedom to make a difference to future emissions trajectories at the city level, and their results would suggest there’s at least some hope on that front.
Source: Reckien et al., (2013) Climate change response in Europe: what’s the reality? Analysis of adaptation and mitigation plans from 200 urban areas in 11 countries. Climatic Change, doi: 10/1007/s10584-013-0989-8