Urban Heat - Emissions AND Biodiversity
If the answers to climate change and urban heat were simple, we’d have solved them long ago. Instead, we do our best to cope with the consequences.
We’ve seen the problem of increasing urban heat coming for years but our inaction has meant it is now a crisis affecting our health, our lifestyles, and the economy.
Wednesday was the first Australian Extreme Heat Awareness Day organised by the Red Cross and Sweltering Cities. The conversation naturally focuses on addressing the immediate impacts and keeping people safe.
The Australian Conservation Foundation has also produced a report Scorched summers: How extreme heat — fuelled by the worsening climate crisis — is reshaping childhood and family life in Australia. Download from this page.
The key findings are confronting, and include:
85% of parents sometimes, often, or always worry about extreme heat’s impact, rising to 89% for parents of children under five
79% of families report sleep disturbances due to heat, increasing to 81% for parents of teenagers.
70% of families are keeping children indoors more often this summer, rising to 76% for families with children under five
74% of parents express concern about how extreme heat affects elderly family members, particularly grandparents.
Nearly half of (45%), and a majority of families with incomes of less than $100,000, report limiting their use of air-conditioning during heatwaves due to energy costs.
70% of concerned parents say climate change or extreme heat will influence their vote in the upcoming federal election.
We also must remember that many renters, low-income families, and homeless people, don’t have the option of air-conditioning. Heat also affects outdoor workers, outdoor sport, outdoor recreation, and all the businesses that provide related services.
So, What Do We Do?
They are all calling for political action to reduce emissions from fossil fuels. While that is something we must do, it is long-term and ignores many other factors that contribute to climate change and urban heat.
Councils, health services, and organisations like the Red Cross are working hard to provide the emergency measures needed to keep people safe.
And we hear calls to lobby politicians and vote for climate, donate to causes, paint our roof white, and raise awareness.
Is this enough, or will the heat pass, and next summer we will be in the same, or worse, situation? How many times have we said, surely this is the wake-up call?
The message is simple and clear but perhaps that is where we are going wrong. Simple technical problems have simple solutions. Complex, systemic problems defy simple solutions. If the answers to climate change and urban heat were simple, we’d have solved them long ago. Instead, we do our best to cope with the consequences.
Complex Solutions for Complex Problems
To reduce urban heat immediately and contribute to the ongoing nature-based, nature-positive actions we need for climate change, we can get on with increasing shade and biodiversity in our streets. It’s not an either/or, we can do both reduce emissions and increase biodiversity at the same time.
While campaigning for a transition from fossil fuels is a simple to understand proposition, it risks you getting sidetracked into arguments and your efforts failing at the ballot box. Greening our streets is far more complex in its execution and outcomes.
Street trees, and the verge gardens that support them and help them thrive, help cool the streets and reduce the heat impact of roads and paving. So, let’s all support our councils’ efforts to increase tree canopy.
By creating shady streets, we enable and encourage walking, cycling and public transport to replace the emissions of many private car trips and the infrastructure they demand. Walkable streets are vital for the large population who do not have the option to drive.
Verge gardens instead of grass also reduce the significant emissions from the fuel used in gardening equipment and grass clippings being transported to landfill or green waste stations. Grass clippings in landfill also produces methane gas.
Street trees with native verge gardens also provide the connection to nature and increase awareness of our local native plants and wildlife right where people live. This is nature all around us, not nature over there. I have a park on my doorstep.
Solutions must also scale with localised projects in regional towns as well as major cities and suburbs, and in disadvantaged areas.
But the most important thing they can do is to provide opportunities for us all to learn to collaborate. If we can learn to collaborate on our hyperlocal commons, we can use the skills and networks gained to collaborate on the global commons.
In this blog post, Ali Cheshmehzangi calls for “collaborative governance … through collaborations with local communities, businesses, and academic institutions.”
What is missing in most collaborations across disciplines or organisations is the inclusion of local communities. Unless we include mainstream community, the votes won’t be there for political action needed, and the status quo will prevail.
I have long believed that the key to the changes we need should be centred around collaboration at the local level between residents and councils because everyone, when they take off their professional hat, is a resident. Even the councillors and council workers.
This form of collaboration requires a different approach - neither the hierarchical top-down approach that assumes that governments taking expert advice and putting laws and policies in place will make things happen, nor the bottom-up approach based on the idea that heroic individuals can change the world.
It’s that middle part: the “swampy lowlands” described so well in this article where diverse people come together in a shared space, bring different knowledge and learn from each other, and do things together to build the trust and relationships needed for innovative collaboration. It’s the world of networks (Doughnut Economics) and partnerships (SDG17). That is how we address complex problems where, without systemic change, we struggle to move beyond talk into meaningful and effective action.
Verge garden projects provide the perfect “swampy lowlands” space, where we are all equal citizens who come with diverse skills, backgrounds, interests, and knowledge and do things together. The “doing” challenges our assumptions, tests our theories, and expands our knowledge and opportunities.
Urban Heat and Heat Islands Workshop
On Sunday 16th February, I am doing an in-person workshop with the ACF Community Brisbane Group and Regen Brisbane on how we all might come together to start forming these collaborations, at scale and speed, to mitigate or adapt to urban heat.
Register here https://www.acf.org.au/brisbane_northside_qld_february_group_meeting
If there is enough interest, we will run some online versions. Please comment below or send me a message if you’d like to take part.
Reading on Collaboration and Swampy Lowlands
Beyond the High Ground and the Swamp: Navigating Complexity in Systems Transformation by Aqeel Camal looks at the swampy lowlands in the context of education https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beyond-high-ground-swamp-navigating-complexity-systems-aqeel-camal-g31fc/
Brisbane’s green future: Climate action strategies aligned with sustainable development goals, by Ali Cheshmehzangi https://uq-urbanplanning.org/2024/10/31/brisbanes-green-future-climate-action-strategies-aligned-with-sustainable-development-goals/
I first came across the idea of the swampy lowlands for change-making collaborations in Ed Morrison’s PHD, Strategic Doing: A Strategy Model for Open Networks https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Strategic-Doing-A-Strategy-Model-for/99570207702621
The Shady Lanes Project: Three Guiding Principles Of Verge Gardening are all about getting the execution right.