The cost of inaction and procrastination has made our fight against climate change an uphill battle. To keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world must reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next eight years. According to the World Resources Institute, plans and commitments coming out of COP26 would limit global warming to 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, a far cry from what scientists agree is a safe target. Many countries made net-zero pledges, but most don’t have policies in place to achieve their updated 2030 pledges, much less net-zero commitments.

If your city, community or organization wants to expedite its path to sustainability and resiliency, a new tool can help stakeholders evaluate the impact of various options.

Thanks to Climate Interactive, you can role-play the UN Climate Negotiations or calculate the emissions reduction potential of various sustainability policies and actions.

These tools can be used to influence decision-makers and members of Congress, to help them understand the impacts and solutions. Climate Interactive made these tools freely available to everyone to build the necessary climate ambition we need to create a livable future for all. More than 75,000 people, including 1,000 leaders in the government, business, nonprofit, think tank, and foundation sectors have used En-ROADS. The US State Department, the Chinese Government, and the United Nations’ Secretary-General’s office have used the models.

“This is the only tool that rapidly maps the connection between specific policy options and sea level rise,” said Bethany Patten, Senior Associate Director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative and lead on The Climate Pathways Project. “It’s a critical one given the current climate policy deliberations happening in Congress.” 

Climate Interactive creates accessible, scientific tools that help people see connections, play out scenarios, and see what works. Climate Interactive, in partnership with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, created two online tools that make climate science and climate action more accessible and easier to understand:

• En-ROADS (Energy Rapid Overview and Decision Support) is a free, online simulation tool that models warming based on input climate actions and policies focused on things like taxes, subsidies, economic growth, fuel mix, energy efficiency, technical innovation, and other factors.
• C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support) is a climate change policy simulator that tests countries’ emissions reduction pledges to determine whether they are sufficient to stay within the planetary limitations scientists agree on.

“Our goal is to help people understand the vast scope of possible actions that we can take on climate,” said Ellie Johnston, climate and energy program coordinator for Climate Interactive. “We synthesized the best available science from reports and institutions like the International Energy Agency, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Bank to create a free and easy-to-use model.”

As Johnston explained, En-ROADS and C-ROADS are tools to test climate models and different variables. Simulating different climate and policy actions helps determine which climate actions will have the greatest impact. There is no single solution. Users can evaluate the impact of carbon pricing, forest conservation, electric vehicles, fossil fuel subsidies and more.

The En-ROADS program predicts which policies and strategies will have the biggest impact. It helps stakeholders visualize rising seal levels, floods, droughts and more. Users can determine which species are losing critical habitat due to climate change. Users can estimate the impact of global warming and climate change on crop yields. It also can estimate the impact of rising temperatures on public health.

If you’re more interested in the nuances of high-stakes negotiations and climate justice, the C-ROADS program provides that perspective. 

“People are hungry for that silver bullet that’s going to fix climate change, whether it’s driving an electric car or changing their diets. But it takes more than one seed to plant a garden,” Johnston said. “Those things are helpful, but En-ROADS shows the role they play and where there is leverage. It shows the whole picture and the required suite of actions. We can do everything to promote good actions, but above all, we must stop extracting fossil fuels. There aren’t any scenarios that keep us below 1.5 degrees Celsius that involve expansion of fossil fuel use. Even the IEA is saying there is no other option but to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

The urgency of this crisis demands that we push our own governments for ambitious and necessary climate action. These tools can be used to influence decision-makers and members of Congress, to help them understand the options and impacts. Climate Interactive made these tools freely available to everyone to build the necessary climate ambition we need to create a livable future.

“We can think about how challenging this will be or we can look at all of the amazing benefits that come with climate action,” Johnston said. “Shutting down coal plants reduces air pollution and saves lives. Future generations will be able to breathe cleaner air than any of us have ever experienced.”

To learn more visit Climate Interactive. To access the climate solutions simulator, click here.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Cities around the world have multiplied their efforts to emit fewer greenhouse gases and brace for climate-change-driven natural disasters, scientists and environmentalists say.

Amid uncertainty over whether Washington will withdraw from a global accord to combat climate change, many people are increasingly pinning their hopes on cities to cut global warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Last month U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he was keeping an open mind on whether to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He has appointed two climate skeptics to top jobs in his administration.

Below are five U.S. cities that left their mark on the fight against climate change in 2016:

Portland, Oregon

Portland made national headlines by pushing the frontiers of how municipal governments can speed up the transition from fossil fuel to clean energy. This month, the West Coast city of nearly 600,000 people said it was the first nationwide to ban the construction of new bulk fossil-fuel storage facilities on its territory.

“Now, more than ever, local community voices are needed, because the risks of not acting on climate change are just too severe,” Portland Mayor Charlie Hales said after adopting the new rules, which prohibit the construction of fossil-fuel storage facilities exceeding 2 million gallons.

Burlington, Vermont

This year, Vermont’s largest urban center put together a plan to pursue its goal of becoming a “net-zero city,” meaning it aims to consume only as much energy as it generates.

“We are doing things that other bigger cities sometimes really even aren’t thinking about yet,” said Neale Lunderville, general manager of the Burlington Electric Department, a part of the municipal government, in a telephone interview.

In 2014, Burlington, a former manufacturing town of 42,000 people, became the first U.S. city to run 100 percent on renewable energy, including wind and solar power, the Electric Department said.

San Diego, California

With a population of nearly 1.4 million people, San Diego was the largest U.S. city in 2016 to have committed to producing all its energy from renewable sources. The city, located in the drier southern part of California, has had to introduce water cuts to combat prolonged drought in the state, which has been aggravated by climate change.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer has committed $130 million of a $3.4 billion budget for 2017 to funding various projects to tackle climate change, such as installing solar panels, adding bike lanes and using energy-efficient street lights.

Cleveland, Ohio

In 2016, Cleveland, on the shores of Lake Erie, made progress on what could be the country’s first freshwater offshore wind turbine installation. As part of Project Icebreaker, six turbines are to be installed eight to 10 miles off Cleveland’s shore, with the aim of meeting 10 percent of the electricity needs of 6,000 homes.

The $120 million project, the brainchild of the Cleveland Foundation, a community group, received a boost in May when the U.S. Department of Energy announced it would award $40 million to help cover the construction of the wind turbines by 2018.

Baltimore, Maryland

In a first nationally, Baltimore announced in 2016 it would beef up its disaster-preparedness plans with neighborhood centers to help the most vulnerable residents, according to Kristin Baja, climate and resilience planner for the city administration.

The centers will be fully equipped with backup electricity and fresh water, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The seaside city of more than half a million people is particularly susceptible to flooding, hurricanes and storms.

“It’s an interesting model,” Garrett Fitzgerald, an adviser for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, a coalition of U.S. and Canadian cities, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “People need a place to go that they can walk to, that they know, that they trust, where they feel safe.”

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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By James B. Stewart, New York Times

The trustees of Cooperstown, N.Y., hardly expected their village (population 1,834) to emerge as a flash point in a national debate over climate change and socially responsible investing.

But when they voted in October to divest the pension fund they oversee of all fossil fuel holdings, Cooperstown became the first community in the nation to do so — not just coal (like Stanford University), but also oil and gas.

Just as the divestiture movement has roiled college campuses across the country, pitting environmental activists against college endowment managers, the trustees’ decision caused a stir locally. The town treasurer and tax collector publicly opposed the move, and a village resident took to the local newspaper to suggest the trustees were indulging their personal causes at the expense of prudent portfolio management.

The issue has upset the usually tranquil village on the shores of scenic Otsego Lake, which bills itself as “America’s hometown” and is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Talk of carbon neutrality and fiduciary duty has at least temporarily supplanted Donald J. Trump, who easily carried Otsego County.

Cooperstown “is abuzz,” said Jim Kevlin, the editor and publisher of the local newspaper, The Freeman’s Journal (founded in 1808 by James Fenimore Cooper’s father) and its companion website, allotsego.com.

“I’ve gotten into arguments with a lot of my friends,” said Louis Allstadt, a retired Exxon Mobil executive and town trustee credited with spearheading the divestiture movement (or blamed for it, depending who you ask). “Even at my weekly lunch group.”

Mr. Allstadt is emerging as something of a small-town hero in the divestiture movement, in part because he has gone full circle on the issue, from managing all of Mobil Oil’s exploration efforts in the United States, Canada and Latin America and helping oversee Mobil’s merger with Exxon during a 31-year career in the industry, to an anti-fracking, anti-fossil-fuel activist.

He has owned a house near Cooperstown since 1973, which served as both a vacation getaway and home base during the years he was based overseas. He moved to the village in 2008 and, after his post-retirement conversion, gave over 150 speeches in upstate New York as part of a successful campaign to ban fracking in the state.

“It’s so much worse than the conventional drilling I was familiar with,” he said. “I started talking about how to make it safer, and inevitably someone would ask, ‘Can you make it safe?’ And basically, the answer is no.”

Mr. Allstadt ran for town trustee as an independent, with support from both Democrats and Republicans. “I wasn’t running as a ‘green,’ or anything like that,” he said. “I mostly focus on efficiency and lowering costs.” (There are two independent trustees and four Democrats, which makes Cooperstown something of an anomaly in heavily Republican Otsego County.)

Mr. Allstadt is becoming more than a local celebrity. He will be featured next week at a news conference in New York City hosted by the fossil fuel divestment advocacy group Divest-Invest Philanthropy.

“Cooperstown showed immense leadership in its decision to divest,” said Lindsay Meiman, a spokeswoman for 350.org, the environmental activist group and a supporter of Divest-Invest.

But the move sparked immediate opposition outside the environmental movement, starting with the town treasurer and tax collector, Derek Bloomfield, who argued at the trustees meeting in October that energy stocks provided valuable diversification.

“Social investment should be done with one’s own money,” he maintained, according to a report in The Freeman’s Journal, adding that in his view, “fossil fuels have done more to raise mankind out of poverty than any other development through the ages.”

“They’ve created a great threat to humanity,” Mr. Allstadt shot back.

Mr. Allstadt argued that the industry faced insurmountable obstacles in the future and fossil fuel stocks would suffer as a result. “You don’t just keep driving your car when you see a cliff ahead,” he told The Freeman’s Journal.

The discussion “got a little contentious over the historic merit of fossil fuels,” the mayor, Jeff Katz, told me this week. He and his family were drawn to Cooperstown by its baseball legacy; he has written two books on the topic, including “Split Season,” about the strike-marred 1981 baseball season.

As a former options trader in Chicago, Mr. Katz is also financially sophisticated. He and the trustees oversee a pension fund, with total assets of about $900,000, that benefits the town’s volunteer firefighters and emergency squad. Of that amount, about $140,000 was invested in an S.&.P 500 fund that included fossil fuel stocks. But last year, State Street started an exchange-traded fund that excludes fossil fuels from the S.&P. 500 (the fund’s symbol is SPYX), offering a cost-efficient way to purge fossil fuels from any portfolio.

“It’s something people believe in, and we thought it’s a positive way for the name of Cooperstown to be out there,” the mayor said. “It’s meaningful in that way. It’s not so meaningful financially. We’re not a $100 million pension fund. No one will suffer if Exxon Mobil triples in the next year.”

He added that he and the trustees didn’t realize Cooperstown would be the first community in the nation to divest itself of all fossil fuels.

But the trustees’ decision, and especially Mr. Allstadt’s comments about driving off a cliff, struck a nerve with a village resident, David Russell, who moved with his family to Cooperstown from Westchester County soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Russell is an asset manager who commutes to Manhattan, but he is also steeped in pension fund management as a former counsel to the New York state comptroller H. Carl McCall, who oversaw the state’s vast public retirement plan.

“It’s a very pristine place up here,” Mr. Russell told me this week. “Feelings run very high about the environment. A lot of people went crazy over fracking.”

“Lou Allstadt went from being a retired oil executive to a pied piper against fossil fuels, which is fine for him personally,” he added. “But as a trustee, you have to look at this through the lens of fiduciary duty, which means acting in the best interest of the beneficiaries. Village trustees shouldn’t be stock pickers, and they shouldn’t be injecting social issues into the decision.”

“I’d never written anything in the paper before,” Mr. Russell said, “but I felt strongly that someone had to speak up.”

So he drafted a lengthy op-ed for The Freeman’s Journal, arguing that the trustees had a duty to seek the “best risk-adjusted returns” for the fund and should be “free from any conflicts of interest or political beliefs/statements.”

Mr. Russell noted that so far this year, the SPYX fund, minus fossil fuels, had lagged the SPY fund by 16 percent.

He added that stock in the two leading firearms manufacturers — Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger — which were sold off by many pension funds after the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school tragedy, have risen 400 percent and 100 percent since then, easily outpacing broad market indexes.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Cities around the world are failing to meet the needs of their people, according to the inaugural Sustainable Cities Index. However, on a broad scale that measures people, planet and profit, Frankfurt is the world’s most sustainable city. London is the runner up.

The research was conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. It examines 50 cities from 31 countries ranking them across a range of indicators to estimate the sustainability of each city. The cities included in the study were selected to provide a sampling of the planet’s greenest cities.

The 2015 report finds that no utopian city exists, with city leaders having to manage a complex balancing act between the three pillars of sustainability (people, planet and profit). The overall Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index ranks the cities as follows:

1. Frankfurt
2. London
3. Copenhagen
4. Amsterdam
5. Rotterdam
6. Berlin
7. Seoul
8. Hong Kong
9. Madrid
10. Singapore
11. Sydney
12. Toronto
13. Brussels
14. Manchester
15. Boston
16. Paris
17. Melbourne
18. Birmingham
19. Chicago
20. New York
21. Houston
22. Philadelphia
23. Tokyo
24. Rome
25. Washington
26. Kuala Lumpur
27. San Francisco
28. Los Angeles
29. Dallas
30. Santiago
31. Sao Paulo
32. Mexico City
33. Dubai
34. Abu Dhabi
35. Shanghai
36. Istanbul
37. Johannesburg
38. Buenos Aires
39. Beijing
40. Rio de Janeiro
41. Doha
42. Moscow
43. Jeddah
44. Riyadh
45. Jakarta
46. Manila
47. Mumbai
48. Wuhan
49. New Delhi
50. Nairobi

The index takes into account 20 different indicators ranging from green space to income inequality to ease of doing business.

Although mature cities achieve the best balance, they cannot rely on historic investment. In a rapidly urbanizing world, the way in which cities are planned, built, operated and redefined has a huge social, environmental and economic impact.

Arcadis defines a sustainable city as one that works well for their citizens in the present without causing problems for themselves and the rest of the world in the future.

Roughly half of Frankfurt’s surface area is green, according to the city’s environment department, which notes that 52 percent of the city area has been set aside for recreation and to offset climate change. It consists of parks, woodland, farmland, orchard meadows, grassland, allotments and hobby gardens, cemeteries, roadside grass verges and bodies of water.

Across the world, cities are performing better for being sustainable for Profit and Planet purposes than they are for People factors. Many of the world’s economic powerhouses are becoming less affordable for their citizens, with the cost of property in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong penalizing their rankings. There is also a tradeoff globally between strong education and poor work-life balance, particularly demonstrated in Hong Kong.

“City leaders need to find ways to balance the demands of generating strong financial returns, being an attractive place for people to live and work, while limiting their damage to the environment. To truly understand how sustainable a city is, we must understand how it ranks in People, Planet and Profit. Only then can city leaders act to assess their priorities, and the pathway to urban sustainability – for the good of all,” said John Batten, Global Cities Director at Arcadis, which produced the new urban index.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Last month, Farmers Insurance Co. filed nine class-action lawsuits arguing that local governments in the Chicago area are aware that climate change is leading to heavier rainfall but are failing to prepare accordingly. The suits allege that the localities did not do enough to prepare sewers and storm water drains in the area during a two-day downpour last April. In what could foreshadow a legal reckoning of who is liable for the costs of climate change, the class actions against nearly 200 Chicago-area communities look to place responsibility on municipalities, perhaps spurring them to take a more forward-looking approach in designing and engineering for a future made different by climate change.

“Farmers is asking to be reimbursed for the claims it paid to homeowners who sometimes saw geysers of sewage ruin basement walls, floors and furniture,” reported E&E News. “The company says it also paid policyholders for lost income, the cost of evacuations and other damages related to declining property values.”

Andrew Logan, an insurance expert with Ceres, told E&E News that there is likely a longer-term agenda in mind with this latest effort, and that the company “could be positioning itself to avoid future losses nationwide from claims linked to floods, sea-level rise and even lawsuits against its corporate policyholders that emit greenhouse gases.”

While these suits are the first of their kind, Micahel Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York, told Reuters that there will be more cases like them attempting to address how city and local governments should manage budgets to prepare for natural disasters that have been intensified by climate change.

“No one is expected to plan for the 500-year storm, but if horrible events are happening with increasing frequency, that may shift the duties,” he said.

Insurance companies are becoming increasingly concerned, and more vocal, about the rising costs of climate change. With large fossil fuel companies reluctant to take greenhouse gas mitigation efforts in the face of potential profit losses, the behemoth insurance industry could provide a counterbalance to the energy industry when it comes to incentivizing near-term emissions cuts, or at least adaptation to the effects of climate change.

“Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming,” reported the New York Times.

A recent Ceres survey found that only 23 of the 184 insurance companies currently have a comprehensive strategy to deal with climate change.

“Every segment of the insurance industry faces climate risks, yet the industry’s response has been highly uneven,” said Ceres president Mindy Lubber, in a statement with the report. “The implications of this are profound because the insurance sector is a key driver of the economy. If climate change undermines the future availability of insurance products and risk management services in major markets throughout the U.S., it threatens the economy and taxpayers as well.”

Last year a study for the Federal Emergency Management Agency found that sea level rise is projected to increase coastal flood-hazard areas in the U.S. by 55 percent by 2100. If adaptation measures are not implemented, the study projects that the number of coastal flood-insurance policies will increase by 130 percent over the same time period. While flood insurance is overseen by the controversial National Flood Insurance Program, this is an example of the increased role of insurers in the face of climate change as well as the increased burden on insurance companies and taxpayers to cover the costs.

In another sign that the insurance industry may be ready to galvanize action, Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest and biggest insurance market, recently called on insurers to incorporate climate change into their models.

“Insurers have an important role to play in mitigating the impact of the changes in climate which have already occurred, through closer coordination with other industries, notably construction,” wrote John Nelson, chairman of Lloyd’s of London, in an op-ed for The Guardian. “There need to be policies to drive up standards and make sure we have resilient homes, that we use better materials. All these and strong forward planning will be key to this effort. Here, too, governments must play their role in enshrining standards in legislation.”

According to the Munich Re insurance group, global weather-related losses and damage have risen from an annual average of about $50 billion in the 1980s to close to $200 billion over the last decade.

While climate change models try to anticipate changes decades in advance, insurers are responsible for selling policies one year at a time. A report last year from the Geneva Association, an insurance industry research group, encourages companies to use forward-looking models when addressing areas impacted by climate change, rather than the more traditional historical precedent.

“In the non-stationary environment traditional approaches, which are solely based on analyzing historical data, increasingly fail to estimate today’s hazard probabilities. A paradigm shift from historic to predictive risk assessment methods is necessary,” reads the report.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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An updated set of standards in Dallas will ensure that city officials aren’t the only ones concerned with green building.

This month the city mandated that all residential and commercial projects must meet the minimum requirements of its Green Construction Code or be certifiable by organizations like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or Green Built Texas. Dallas established its green ordinance with the help of a task force five years ago, slowly rolling out additional layers—including energy, water and roof provisions—every so often for various structure types and sizes. The first phase began in 2009, while Phase 2 was initiated Oct. 1, though city council passed the ordinance last fall.

Dallas is among the first cities to enforce a green building code. California’s code kicks in Jan. 1, 2014, though some cities in the state, like San Francisco, have already enforced green codes.

Building permit seekers in Dallas now have to attend a six-hour training course and pass exams for both residential and commercial projects. Builders for either type of project also must provide documented experience in the design, construction, management or inspection of green projects.

Other requirements include a conflict-of-interest policy requiring a third party to review green building projects and compliance with LEED or the International Green Construction Code (IgCC).

Single family residential projects should meet the minimum requirements of International Code Council 700—the National Green Building Standard. Lots must be designed so that at least 70 percent of the built environment is permeable, according to an interpretation from Green Building Law Update. Projects must utilize drip irrigation for all “bedding areas” of landscaping.

The city first implemented a green building program a decade ago. There are about 144 LEED certified facilities in Dallas, according to the USGBC.

“The City of Dallas has a goal of being carbon neutral by 2030, and this is one big step towards that goal,” Meredith Hunt, sustainability manager at Dallas-based T Howard & Associates, wrote in a blog. “Cities across the U.S. are beginning to adopt the 2012 IgCC, as a whole or in parts … As a new code to follow, there may be a few hiccups in the beginning, but we believe this is a great step forward by the City of Dallas.”

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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This book is a useful addition to our literature on climate change law, with its focus on climate change at the local level. It examines how local governments, municipalities and city authorities address climate change through law and policy, and the problems/constraints faced in mitigation and adaptation at the local level. The 15 contributors have thoughtfully and critically analyzed the issues from intellectual as well as practical perspectives, drawing on the experiences of North America as well as the EU, China, Australia and South Africa.

The reader is left with deeper insights and suggestions for the way forward.’ – Irene Lin Heng Lye, National University of Singapore

‘This volume offers a thorough exploration of the challenges and opportunities for local governments in many parts of the world to mitigate and adapt to climate change.’

– Laura Watchmann, LEED AP-ND, Executive Director, NALGEP ‘As the international climate consensus is fading, the focus has shifted from the global to the local. This book is timely and groundbreaking as it frames a new subject of legal study and proves the dramatic surge of local climate action. A must-read.’

– Klaus Bosselmann, University of Auckland, New Zealand Local Climate Change Law examines the role of local government, especially within cities, in addressing climate change through legal, policy, planning and other tools.

This timely study offers a multi-jurisdictional perspective, featuring international contributors who examine both theoretical and practical dimensions of how localities are addressing climate mitigation and adaptation in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, South Africa and the United States, as well as considering the place of localities in global climate law agreements and transnational networks. Written from a multi-disciplinary perspective, this book will appeal to academics, post graduate and undergraduate students in law and political science, local and national government policy makers and politicians, as well as practicing local government lawyers.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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City mayors, development planners, and civil society representatives met on Monday in Antigua, Guatemala to kick off the 43rd Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly to discuss challenges linked to rapid urbanization in the Americas and exchange best practices for the sustainable development of cities and communities.

Participants also discussed priority areas for cooperation on urban sustainability ahead of the 7th World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia, in 2014.

The public roundtable discussion on the theme Building Sustainable Cities and Communities in the Americas: From Demonstration Projects to Scale was hosted by the Spanish Agency for International Development (AECID) Cooperation Training Center in Antigua and jointly organized by the Department of Sustainable Development of the OAS and the Permanent Missions of Guatemala and the United States.

The meeting took place in the context of the Sustainable Communities in Central America and the Caribbean initiative, which was launched in 2012 under the framework of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) with support from the U.S. Department of State. This initiative supports the implementation of 14 community-level demonstration projects in the following priority areas:

• Clean energy and energy efficiency;
• Resilience to natural disasters;
• Sustainable transport solutions; and
• Waste management and recycling (including electronic waste).

Ambassador Carmen Lomellin, U.S. Permanent Representative to the OAS, emphasized the need for collective action to address shared challenges and invited all OAS member states to contribute to future collaboration on urban sustainability through the OAS. She noted that the roundtable provided an important opportunity for dialogue that facilitates the exchange of lessons learned and best practices in urban design and planning.

Ambassador Lomellin pointed to the Sustainable Communities initiative as an example of fruitful cooperation under ECPA.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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The release of the Blueprint for Sustainable Use of Resources by the Environment Bureau outlining policy proposals for the next 10 years is a significant step.

As in most cities, the success of that policy vision will depend largely on the response of the community to the proposals and to similar initiatives in the areas of energy, water, and environmentally acceptable transport.

Given our compact built environment and the density of population and development, there is not only the opportunity to achieve greater sustainability, but also to become a model smart city and one of the most liveable in the Asian region – so long as we have the leadership and commitment to such a goal.

More than half of the world’s population today lives in cities and this is anticipated to rise to 70 percent by 2030.

The role of cities as engines of economic growth and the need to address the rise in carbon emissions which result from such economic activity.

This need has inspired the emergence of smart city initiatives across the globe. “Smart” has become interchangeable with “green,” but it’s more than that. A smart city is one that integrates all the key resources – energy, waste, water, and transport – using innovative technologies.

Hong Kong already scores highly in terms of its mass transit system and the use of the Octopus smart-card system. However, the government clearly needs to do more to manage other resources.

Energy efficiency is one of the big challenges and a massive opportunity for improvement.

More than 80 percent of the city’s energy is consumed by buildings, mostly in air conditioning. Incentives for such technologies as smart metering is one way to demonstrate what can be done to measure consumption and drive improved energy efficiency.

One of the by-products of economic activity is waste, the most urgent challenge for Hong Kong and one which the recent Blueprint seeks to address. About 17,000 tons of waste is generated every day. While there is increased awareness of the need to address this, what is now urgently needed, as a catalyst, is accountability. The pay-per-use proposals contained in the Blueprint are a key priority.

On the other hand, waste should not only be viewed as a cost but also as a business opportunity. This needs infrastructural support, and perhaps there is the need to revisit the contribution that could be made by the government Eco-Park initiative, which was intended to provide sites for such activities but where there has been limited success so far.

Water is another resource where Hong Kong can do a better job, especially in water treatment and the recycling of rainwater.

Alarmingly, water is not valued locally as it should be and much is wasted. It is estimated that 30 percent is lost en route from source to customer, and it is also subject to serious pollution.

As we know, much of the air pollution in the city comes from the road-transport sector. This means better efficiency in managing our rail interchanges, and a more integrated approach that includes the bus and taxi fleets. More support is also required to put electric and/or hybrid vehicles on our streets.

Recently announced initiatives to replace 80,000 diesel-powered commercial vehicles and to upgrade the bus fleets indicate that at least the administration is taking roadside pollution seriously and those efforts should be supported.

Above all, there needs to be a more coordinated approach to addressing the overall sustainable agenda with all sections of society playing their part.

It is essential to introduce innovative and creative solutions which support and improve the city’s growing reputation as a living laboratory for sustainable technologies – whether in terms of developing smart homes, smart offices, a smart grid, or smart transport, Hong Kong must be a leader.

While the city needs to work hard to maintain its competitive edge, it also has to stay relevant by pursuing its smart-city ambitions.

Ultimately, the outcome of a smart city is quality of life, and Hong Kong needs this to retain its most important resource of all – its people and their talent.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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A bipartisan group of mayors from across the U.S. passed a resolution Monday that green lights projects to tackle climate change. The group approved a resolution at the U.S. Conference of Mayors event in Dallas that encourages cities to use nature to “protect freshwater supplies, defend the nation’s coastlines, maintain a healthy tree and green space cover and protect air quality.”

The group included red-state Democratic mayors Lee Leffingwell from Austin, Texas, and Greg Stanton of Phoenix, Ariz. Republicans that signed the resolution include Carmel, Ind. Mayor Jim Brainard, and Betsy Price, mayor of Fort Worth, Texas.

“What’s so significant is that there was a unanimous vote on an issue that can be so divisive,” said Laura Huffman, director of Texas’ Nature Conservancy.

On top of infrastructure projects aimed at mitigating climate impacts, cities will look to combine tradition pipes with open spaces to build effective storm water collection systems. By tackling such projects, more parks, and recreation areas will be created as well the mayors said.

The overall strategy will address water, wastewater and stormwater runoff, heat island effects, preservation of open space and provide an inventory of emissions from fossil fuels for city operations to set reduction targets.

The move comes as climate change policies continue to divide lawmakers in Congress. As President Obama proposes more regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the name of climate change, Republicans are seeking to block his standards using any means available.

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