Farming News - From the Enviroment Agency: EA chief - Cities are a neglected battle ground in fight to tackle climate change
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From the Enviroment Agency: EA chief - Cities are a neglected battle ground in fight to tackle climate change
Speaking at Imperial College London today (Tuesday 24 January), Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, will outline his vision of a ‘citytopia’ – the best place to live in the future alongside a changing climate.
He will point to developments such as the Olympic Park as offering the urban environments of the future, where green space and sustainable homes sit side by side.
Sir James Bevan will warn that while our cities of the 21st century are no longer enveloped in thick smog – led in part by action from the Environment Agency to reduce harmful pollutants from industry – and wildlife is returning to our city’s rivers, there is much more to be done to create the efficient and climate resilient cities of the future.
Setting out his vision of the future, he will say:
Setting out his vision of the future, he will say:
“The Citytopia of the future would be the best possible place to live: for wildlife as much as for people. That means more green (and blue) alongside the grey and black.
“As well as efforts to create better access to green space, our cities would have embedded sustainable drainage which increases the ability of our cities and their drainage systems to absorb large amounts of water when it rains, for example, by creating parks to act as giant sponges or putting grass on roofs to allow rainwater to drain away gradually.
“As our cities grow and our current drains reach full capacity, as we concrete over areas that used to act as natural drains, and as climate change brings us bigger and more violent rainfall, these schemes can make all the difference between basements, underpasses, city centres and Tube lines that are flooded and dangerous, and a city that just shrugs its shoulders, puts up its umbrellas, and keeps going.”
For the first time in history, more people now live in cities and urban environments than the countryside. He will describe how his city of the future would be the solution to – and not part of – the climate problem:
“This Citytopia would no longer be part of the climate problem, because it would not be emitting the greenhouse gases that are causing our climate to change. It would achieve that with the right transport systems, so that people could easily walk or cycle to wherever they wanted to go or use cheap and convenient public transport fuelled by renewable energy.
“It would have buildings designed to be energy efficient, heated by solar or other renewable energy and cooled by natural airflow designed into the building at the start. It would use all its resources efficiently and turn all its waste back into a resource to be reused again. It would have arrangements that allowed its inhabitants to share many of the things they needed – such as bicycles and vehicles – without having to buy or own them all, thus vastly reducing the carbon cost of producing, consuming and disposing of all the stuff we currently feel we have to each own ourselves.”
“It would also be a major part of the solution. Its green areas – parks, woodland, grasslands, flowerbeds, football pitches – would all be acting as carbon sinks, taking damaging carbon out of the atmosphere and so reducing the extent of climate change. In its design and its infrastructure our city would be perfectly adapted to living safely and well in a climate-changed world.
“It would have flood defences that protected people from the worst that the violent weather caused by a changing climate could fling at it. It would have power and transport systems designed to cope just as well with periods of high temperature and drought as with record-breaking rainfall”
“It would also be a major part of the solution. Its green areas – parks, woodland, grasslands, flowerbeds, football pitches – would all be acting as carbon sinks, taking damaging carbon out of the atmosphere and so reducing the extent of climate change. In its design and its infrastructure our city would be perfectly adapted to living safely and well in a climate-changed world.
“It would have flood defences that protected people from the worst that the violent weather caused by a changing climate could fling at it. It would have power and transport systems designed to cope just as well with periods of high temperature and drought as with record-breaking rainfall”
Sir James will urge the need for innovation to achieve Net Zero targets. He will also call for better collaboration and imagination to ensure that climate positive and nature rich cities are a key cornerstone in our sustainable future.