Sharm El-Sheikh — Imagine sleeping outside because inside your house is too hot!
This is going to be the norm for many people if we fail to control climate change. Cities are warming twice as fast as the global average. The most vulnerable to deadly heat are the young, old, and fragile. It is estimated that cities across the globe will warm by 4°C by 2100, endangering the health, productivity, and quality of life of the growing urban population.
Many people flocking to cities in rapidly urbanising areas such as Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are coming to places that are increasingly vulnerable to soaring temperatures and high humidity, according to a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Satellite data was used in the study to measure heat worldwide, giving researchers a sharper picture of the problem on a global scale.
In addition, population growth will expose millions of people to health-endangering heat. Health impacts of extreme heat include exacerbating conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular, kidney problems, and respiratory disease, and causing heat stroke and poor mental health. Climate change is increasing conditions suitable for infectious disease pathogens, reversing global progress in providing food and water security, and increasing exposure to wildfires.
However, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that cities are dealing with the impacts of climate change every single day and are learning just how to cope with the heat.
South Africa and other African countries are already following many other developed cities and started implementing solutions by either planting more trees to act as a carbon sink. South Africa has gone a step further with its rollout of cool roofing, aimed at providing low-tech, but energy-efficient passive cooling solutions to communities. A cool roof deflects sunlight thus absorbing less solar energy. The benefits of cool roofs include energy savings, cost savings, improved roof and equipment life, and a short payback period.
A pilot project has been underway in the Northern Cape province, in the town of !Kheis, to coat roofs and walls of homes, schools, and municipal buildings in the town with a cool coating. It not only improved the comfort of homes but created several new businesses to mix and install cool roof coatings. The pilot has grown to over 500 buildings locally and is now used as a model for funding cool roofs in other South African cities.
WWF Global Lead for Climate and Energy, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said that “we have come to COP27 at a time of global crisis, but these crises are a reason to increase our climate ambition, not reduce it. The Challenge’s goal – scaling up nature-based solutions to tackle climate change impacts in cities – is an important one. Cities play a key role in avoiding the most severe impacts of global warming and it is important that we champion ambitious and sustainable efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.”
Are cool roofs the future?
To accelerate affordable, sustainable cooling access, the Million Cool Roofs Challenge was launched in 2019 as a project of the Clean Cooling Collaborative, a philanthropic initiative to make climate-friendly cooling accessible to all, in collaboration with the Global Cool Cities Alliance, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), and Nesta Challenges. 10 finalist teams from Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Niger, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa – developing countries where temperatures are high and access to cooling is low – were awarded U.S. $125,000 grants to test different approaches and models to scaling up cool roofs in their countries.
Cool Roofs Indonesia was the winning team due to the effectiveness of their project, their collaborative approach, and their plans for scaling up their work. The team installed cool roofs on 70 buildings across 15 cities in Indonesia, including 36 low-cost housing units, 10 schools, two factories, and one orphanage. In total, the team estimates that 10,250 people will benefit from the newly installed cool roofs.
Helping cities unleash the cooling power of nature
In a warming world, cooling is not a luxury but a necessity, says Eric Usher, head of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative. “Cooling is the key to protecting communities from rising temperatures, keeping food safe, and vaccines stable, accelerating the energy transition, and getting to net-zero. By scaling up sustainable cooling solutions we can deliver on mitigation and adaptation goals while strengthening food and energy systems.
According to Usher, countries around the world have endured scorching weather. Heat waves can have deadly health and economic impacts which are amplified for the 1.1 billion urban or rural poor without access to cooling. Our children, the elderly, those with chronic illnesses, the 1 billion workers who spend long periods of time indoors, very large numbers, very large effects. Heat-related deaths globally have increased by two-thirds over the last two decades. And heat waves already impact half a billion children today. By 2050, they will reach almost every child on earth. Heat stress is going to wipe out 80 million full-time jobs equivalent just by 2030, which is just around the corner.”
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that “climate change is already upon us, impacting billions of people. Climate impacts are further aggravated by a global energy and food security crisis that is hitting the poorest the hardest. Across 54 high-impact countries, 1.2 billion poor people are already at high risk because they lack access to cooling. In some countries, up to 70 % of food produced is lost due to a lack of cold chains. At 1.5°C of warming, 2.3 billion people could be vulnerable to severe and life-threatening heat waves.”
He urged the need to expand cooling to protect people and our pockets to keep our food and medicines safe and to save our most vulnerable. “We could save millions of lives from the rapid shift to efficient climate-friendly cooling and tackle the triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Coordinated international action to accelerate this transition can help the world avoid the equivalent of 48 years of total annual joint greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He also pointed out that cooling saves lives, but it’s also one of the biggest contributors to global warming, cooling equipment, and appliances that use hydrofluorocarbons, which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas.
He also urged governments to include the solutions you’ll hear about in the implementation of your climate commitments, the private sector to invest in research and innovation to develop and bring to market super efficient, sustainable technologies, and align your practices to the net zero targets in transition. And finally urged investors, public and private to ensure their investments support the transition to sustainable cooling, and then the achievement of the net zero cooling world.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched a new initiative at COP27 which incentivises cities to use the cooling power of nature. The Nature for Cool Cities Challenge is a joint effort under the framework of the UNEP-led Cool Coalition. SEforALL, WWF, Mission Innovation, RMI, WRI, the University of Oxford, Durham University, and other Cool Coalition members joined forces to set up this challenge. UNEP will work with Cool Coalition members to collect pledges, donor contributions, and catalyse action to harness the cooling power of nature toward COP28.
“In a warming world, cities have a critical role to play in achieving SDG 7, delivering sustainable cooling, and meeting the climate crisis. We urge them to embrace nature as a tool to cool their cities and pledge to scale up nature-based solutions by joining this challenge,” said Sherry Kennedy, Director of Communications at SEforALL. “The Nature for Cool Cities Challenge will help us demonstrate the power of urban nature to adapt to the effects of extreme heat, avoid emissions, and reduce energy demand.”
This story was produced as part of the 2022 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.