By Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News

High-tide flooding is eating away at the coastal property tax base just when communities need it most to adapt to climate change and repair the damage.

Rising seas have already eroded coastal property values from Maine to Mississippi by billions of dollars over the past decade as buyers pay less for homes in neighborhoods where high-tide flooding is creeping in, a new report shows.

The loss in property values points to a compound problem for coastal communities: Just as accelerating sea level rise forces governments to build flood walls and repair infrastructure more often, it may also eat away at the property tax base that provides many cities’ primary revenue stream for funding that very work.

“This is a real negative feedback loop,” said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If they don’t start to recognize these issues and reports like this and open their eyes to what is definitely happening, they’re going to find themselves in pretty dire straits.”

The analysis, published Wednesday by First Street Foundation, estimates that property value losses from coastal flooding in 17 states were nearly $16 billion from 2005 to 2017. Florida, New Jersey, New York and South Carolina each saw more than $1 billion in losses.

“This isn’t a forward-facing issue,” said Jeremy Porter, a lecturer at Columbia University, consultant at First Street and an author of the report. “It’s something that’s been occurring. It’s something that’s affecting people’s homes now.”

Climate change is accelerating sea level rise and has driven a rapid increase in the frequency of coastal flooding on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in recent decades. Residents and local businesses are already feeling the costs.

As the problem has worsened, advocacy groups and some financial institutions have begun warning about the potential for cascading economic impacts from rising seas.

In 2016, Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage company, warned that sea level rise would eventually destroy billions of dollars worth of property. Homes represent many Americans’ largest asset, it noted, and the inevitable decline in coastal property value could ripple throughout local economies. Homeowners might decide to stop paying off their mortgages if their home values drop below the balance they owe the bank.

While these economic losses might happen gradually, the Freddie Mac report said, “they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.”

The credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service warned local governments in 2017 that they could face lower ratings if they fail to adapt to climate change, a decision that would raise the cost of borrowing money through bonds.

“What they essentially laid out was, when you have a disaster and that affects your property tax revenues, that’s going to affect your credit rating,” Moore said. “If you haven’t put the measures in place to weather that storm, you’re going to get impacted right at the moment when you need to borrow.”

The First Street report shows that these effects may already be occurring.

While some groups have estimated the value of property at risk in the future, Porter said the new report is the first to provide specific data over such a broad area about the effects on real estate that have already happened.

Porter and Steven McAlpine combined tide gauge data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with elevation data from the United States Geological Survey to map tidal flooding parcel by parcel. They then compared sales of similar homes in areas at risk of flooding to homes in dry neighborhoods.

While they found that prices generally increased, even in neighborhoods with recurrent flooding, property values in areas with nuisance flooding were rising much more slowly. That difference accounts for their total estimated loss in value.

The greatest loss from 2005 to 2017 was in Ocean City, New Jersey, a resort town that saw a loss in property value of about $500 million, the analysis estimated. Miami Beach, Florida, was second, with more than $300 million in home value wiped out.

What Cities Can Do

The rankings skew toward prosperous, densely populated areas, Porter said, because they’re based on value. But a tool on the organization’s website shows that many working class communities are getting hit too, even if it doesn’t translate into as large a dollar figure.

Chesapeake, Virginia, for example, has nearly as many at-risk homes as Ocean City but lost a fraction of the total value. Porter said these losses can be more devastating if they represent a larger proportion of a family’s wealth, or of a town’s total tax revenue.

While governments and residents are already incurring these costs, Moore said there’s a lot they could do to soften the blow.

Towns need to reorient their planning and revenue to discourage coastal development and ease their reliance on the taxes it generates, he said. On the federal level, Moore said, Congress should require that flood risks are disclosed as part of home sales, and that federal flood maps reflect future risks caused by rising seas.

While communities try to adapt to the rising risks and damage from climate change, an increasing number of cities are also taking steps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming.

Matthew Eby, First Street’s executive director, said it’s clear from their research that the costs of failing to act are piling up. “We’re going to have a much different conversation over the next five, 10, 15 years about what’s actually happening,” he said. “We’re hoping that this is that market indicator that people can start paying attention to, so that we can react.”

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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Towns and cities in the world’s developing countries are growing on an unprecedented scale. Ten years ago, an estimated 40 percent of the developing world’s population – or 2 billion people – lived in urban areas. Since then, their numbers have expanded almost twice as fast as total population growth, to more than 2.5 billion. That is the equivalent to almost five new cities the size of Beijing, every 12 months. By 2025, more than half the developing world’s population – 3.5 billion people – will be urban.

While urbanization in Europe and North America took centuries, spurred on by industrialization and steady increases in per capita income, in the developing world it will occur in the space of two or three generations. In many developing countries, urban growth is being driven not by economic opportunity but by high birth rates and a mass influx of rural people seeking to escape hunger, poverty and insecurity.

Most of the world’s fastest growing cities are found in low-income countries of Asia and Africa with young populations. Over the next 10 years, the current number of urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow by almost 45 percent, from 320 million to 460 million. Kinshasa, capital of one of the world’s poorest countries, is now the world’s fastest growing future megacity. By 2025, the urban population of least-developed countries in Asia will have grown from 90 million to a projected 150 million, and Dhaka is expected to be the world’s fifth largest city, with 21 million inhabitants.

Urbanization in low-income countries is accompanied by high levels of poverty, unemployment and food insecurity. Worldwide, an estimated one billion people live in crowded slums, without access to basic health, water and sanitation services. Around 30 percent of the developing world’s urban population – 770 million people – are unemployed or “working poor”, with incomes below official poverty lines.

Those urban poor spend most of their income just to feed themselves. Yet their children suffer levels of malnutrition that are often as high as those found in rural areas. To survive, millions of slum dwellers have resorted to growing their own food on every piece of available land: in backyards, along rivers, roads and railways, and under power lines.

The growth of urban slums outpaces urban growth by a wide margin. By 2020, the proportion of the urban population living in poverty could reach 45 percent, or 1.4 billion people. By then, 85 percent of poor people in Latin America, and almost half of those in Africa and Asia, will be concentrated in towns and cities.

That prospect has been described as “the new population bomb” and a nightmare for governance: sprawling, degraded and impoverished cities with large, vulnerable populations that are socially excluded, young and unemployed.

Greener Cities Matter

A brighter future for the world’s developing cities is both imperative and possible. Historically, cities have been places not of misery and despair but of opportunity – for economies of scale, employment and improved living standards, especially for rural people seeking a better life. They have served as engines of social progress and national economic development.

Creating the conditions to realize that potential – in Kinshasa, Dhaka and other growing towns and cities across the developing world – is crucial now and will be more so in the decades ahead. The challenge is to steer urbanization from its current, unsustainable path, towards sustainable, greener cities that offer their inhabitants choice, opportunity and hope.

The concept of green cities–designed for resilience, self-reliance, and social, economic and environmental sustainability — is usually associated with urban planning in more developed countries. It suggests high-tech eco-architecture, bicycle greenways and zero-waste, “closed loop” industries.

However, it has a special application, and significantly different social and economic dimensions, in low-income developing countries. There, the core principles of greener cities can guide urban development that ensures food security, decent work and income, a clean environment and good governance for all citizens.

A starting point for growing greener cities is to recognize and integrate into urban policy and planning many of the creative solutions that the urban poor themselves have developed to strengthen their communities and improve their lives. One of those solutions – and an essential feature of green city planning in developed, and a growing number of developing, countries – is urban and peri-urban horticulture.

Urban and peri-urban horticulture (or UPH) is the cultivation of a wide range of crops – including fruit, vegetables, roots, tubers and ornamental plants – within cities and towns and in their surrounding areas. It is estimated that 130 million urban residents in Africa and 230 million in Latin America engage in agriculture, mainly horticulture, to provide food for their families or to earn income from sales.

While the urban poor, particularly those arriving from rural areas, have long practiced horticulture as a livelihood and survival strategy, in many countries the sector is still largely informal, usually precarious and sometimes illegal. But that is changing rapidly.

Over the past decade, governments in 20 countries have sought FAO’s assistance in removing barriers and providing incentives, inputs and training to low-income “city farmers”, from the burgeoning metropolises of West and Central Africa to the low-income barrios of Managua, Caracas and Bogotá.

Through multidisciplinary projects, FAO has helped governments and city administrations to optimize policies, institutional frameworks and support services for UPH, and to improve horticultural production systems. It has promoted irrigated commercial market gardening on urban peripheries, simple hydroponic micro-gardens in slum areas, and green rooftops in densely populated city centers.

The FAO program, and similar initiatives by partner organizations, have demonstrated how horticulture helps empower the urban poor, and contributes to their food security and nutrition. But it can also help grow greener cities that are better able to cope with social and environmental challenges, from slum improvement and management of urban wastes to job creation and community development.

Read More About Greener Cities.

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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Sir David Attenborough announced the United Nations’ launch of a new campaign enabling people to unite in actions to battle climate change.

In an address to the opening session of United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland, Sir David Attenborough urged everyone to use the UN’s new ActNow.bot, designed to give people the power and knowledge to take personal action against climate change directly on the Facebook Messenger Platform.

Speaking for “The People’s Seat” initiative, Attenborough called it the result of new activism shaped by people from around the world and collected through social media.

“In the last two weeks, the world’s people have taken part in creating this address, answering polls, creating videos and voicing their opinions. They want you – the decision makers – to act now,” the British broadcaster said. “The people are behind you, supporting you in making tough decisions, but they are also willing to make sacrifices in their daily lives,” Attenborough said.  “To make this even easier, the UN is launching the Act Now bot. Helping people to discover simple everyday actions that they can take, because they recognize that they too must play their part.”

The speech was preceded by a video produced with social media content that people had posted in advance of COP24 using the hashtag #TakeYourSeat

The innovative UN campaign was created with the support of Facebook and advertising company Grey and harnesses advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to engage people in the growing movement to take climate action.

The ActNow.bot is a fully interactive and responsive chat bot, located on the UN’s Facebook page that suggests everyday actions – determined by the user’s interaction with the bot – that can be taken to preserve the environment and logged on the platform to be shared with social media followers to persuade them to take action too. The collective actions will be presented during the Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in New York in September 2019.

“Rising global temperature, record levels of greenhouse emissions, and increasing impacts of climate change require urgent and measurable action on the part of everyone,’’ she said.  “This new social media tool, a Facebook Messenger bot, will help people learn about activities to reduce their carbon footprint, and show—and share with friends – how they are making an impact.  We all need to do things differently.”

The initiative comes as global decision makers are being asked to intensify efforts in the battle against climate change and to agree the implementation guidelines of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

All this is evolving against a backdrop of conclusive new evidence by UN Environment which found countries need to significantly step up the necessary actions to fulfil the commitments made in Paris.

The Climate Action Bot aims to highlight popular global commitment to reducing climate change, and to stand behind decision makers worldwide in taking actions to preserve our environment. Click here to read the People’s Address delivered by Sir David Attenborough.

For more information, see the relevant Media Fact Sheet. To help promote the campaign, see also the UN’s COP24 digital assets, which are in the public domain.

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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On behalf of UNDP, welcome to the launch of the UNDP Sustainable Urbanization Strategy. As we meet here in Quito today for the Habitat III conference, we are also celebrating the International Day for Poverty Eradication.

Many of the world’s poor now live in cities where the most pressing development challenges are found. In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to ensure that the urban poor are not left behind.

The New Urban Agenda, which is due to be adopted here at Habitat III, aims to ensure that the cities of today and tomorrow offer an inclusive and sustainable future for all. The UNDP Sustainable Urbanization Strategy lays out the support which UNDP as a global development organization can provide to help achieve that.

Around our world, people are moving to cities in very large numbers.  Cities are seen as places of opportunity and hope, where hard work and determination can transform lives.

UNDP has developed its sustainable urbanization strategy to support cities to deliver on the hopes of their citizens and to implement the New Urban Agenda. Many people in cities, particularly young people, lack work and say they currently feel excluded from opportunities. For women and girls, cities can be dangerous places where they cannot walk in safety and may risk exploitation in dangerous and demeaning jobs.  Natural disasters – including those exacerbated by climate change – and conflict and citizen insecurity can turn back the clock on hard won development gains.

UNDP’s experiences of working in towns and cities around the world have shaped this first UNDP sustainable urbanization strategy, and will guide our efforts beyond Quito.

Allow me to share three of our lessons learned:

1. For cities to be succeed, they need to meet the needs of all their residents. Truly dynamic cities make space for all, and serve the needs of all.  Inclusivity is one of the main principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in which UN Member States pledged to leave no one behind. The needs and aspirations of poor and marginalized people in the world’s cities must be addressed to fulfill that ambition.
2. Cities must be resilient to natural and man-made disasters and crises. Urban areas are now home to more than half the world’s people, and they also host most of the world’s critical infrastructure, key development assets, political institutions, and major socio-economic architecture. If disasters and crises rock cities, the spillover effects are great. In the first half of 2016 alone, natural disasters caused US$71 billion in damages worldwide, with most economic loss concentrated in cities. Political instability and conflict also have major costs.
3. Cities are at the forefront of the battle against climate change and environmental degradation. They produce more than seventy percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and use eighty per cent of the world’s energy. How cities grow and develop in the coming decades will play a significant part in determining whether the world can live within its planetary boundaries.

Delivering the sustainable, inclusive, and resilient cities of the future requires that we work together in partnership, as UNDP is committed to doing.

Our partnerships are diverse:

• Here in Ecuador, we have been part of the efforts to help local communities recover and rebuild in Manabí province following the 16 April earthquake this year.
• In Soacha, Colombia, a town close to Bogota, UNDP and UNCHR have been working together on a programme called Building Sustainable Solutions. It supports the local municipality with land registration and title, promoting economic development with the support of the private sector, and with community and institutional strengthening.
• In Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, UNDP has worked with local community groups to improve access to municipal services.
• In Bangladesh, UNDP has supported municipal leaders to improve the livelihoods of millions of urban dwellers through our large scale Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction programme.
• Initiatives like these, taken to scale through partnerships and strong urban leadership, will be critical to implementing the New Urban Agenda and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Helen Clark is the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. She also chairs the United Nations Development Group.

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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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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The threat of a water crisis is looming for hundreds of millions of the world’s inhabitants, as climate change, water management challenges and demographic shifts are disrupting water’s ecosystem. As a result, many cities are currently scrambling to shore up resilience, improve efficiency and guarantee the quality of their water. When it comes to ramping up water sustainability, cities globally can learn from Rotterdam, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

The social and economic implications of water to cities is key, providing, among others, an infrastructure to support residents and businesses, as well as providing an impetus toward improving the standard of living of inhabitants. In line with the rise of megacities, and the ever growing urbanization trend, in particular in upcoming markets, addressing the management of water in and around cities in a sustainable manner is becoming an ever more pressing matter for city policy makers. This means efficiently providing safe, reliable, and easily accessible water to residents and businesses, as well as trustworthy access to sanitation and protecting waterways from pollution.

Sustainable Water Index

To better understand how 50 of the world’s top cities are performing in terms of water sustainability, Arcadis recently partnered with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) to gauge the management of city waterscapes across a range of factors. The researchers looked at three factors – the resiliency of the water system, the efficiency of water use and the quality of water use – with each of the dimensions broken down into a range of sub-indices.

The authors found that, among the cities taken into scrutiny, Rotterdam is the most sustainable city in the ranking. The city scores number one in the resilience category, offering strong performances in almost all major sub-indices. The Dutch city has taken a pro-active approach to water stewardship, including a resilience civil servant as well as a comprehensive set of packages aimed at improving and maintaining the cities’ relationship with its local water bodies.

Danish capital Copenhagen takes the number two spot, on the back of a strong performance in water efficiency sub-indices and resilience, while Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands, takes the number three spot. Berlin and Brussels complete the top five, with strong performances in resilience (2nd) and quality (4th) respectively.

The first Asia-Pacific city on the list is Sydney, with a strong performance in efficiency (4th) although its quality score (25th) is somewhat below par – while Melbourne, the number 11 on the list, has its quality placement at number 17. The first US city to make the list is Washington, which boasts good quality water (12th), while Los Angeles takes the number 2 efficiency spot and number 27 overall.

Eight of the top ten spots are held by European cities, reflecting the continent’s strong geographic and demographic advantages surrounding water (temperate climate, low population densities), as well as a long history of dealing with water problems; many of these cities have mature water systems that have been built up over a long period of time, many times in response to challenges they have faced with water. Two outliers are included in the list however, with London 21st and Italian capital Rome 28th, suggesting that there is room for improvement.

The remainder of the list contains two Indian cities, New Delhi and Mumbai – the cities constantly score in the bottom percentile of the three indices. African cities too are relatively lowly ranked on the index, including Nairobi, which manages a number 10 place in resilience at number 46 overall, and Johannesburg at number 45. The Latin American cities of Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Buenos Aires hold the number 44, 35 and 34 spots respectively.

According to the researchers, Latin American cities perform poorly largely due to water quality, requiring improved wastewater treatment and sanitation.

The African cities listed are held back by inefficiency and poorer water quality.

John Batten, Global Director of Water and Cities at Arcadis, says: “The World Economic Forum named water crises as one of the top three highest global risks to economies, environments and people, in terms of impact in 2016 [after climate change and the use of weapons of mass destruction]. Water demand issues and climate change risks are happening right here and right now. The cities that best understand this and act first will be the ones that not only help save the planet from an impending water crisis, but will also be the first to attract investment and improve their competitive position.”

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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With every year that passes, we’re getting further away from averting a human-caused climate disaster. That’s the key message in this year’s “Low Carbon Economy Index,” a report released by the accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The report highlights an “unmistakable trend”: The world’s major economies are increasingly failing to do what’s needed to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. That was the target agreed to by countries attending the United Nations’ 2009 climate summit; it represents an effort to avoid some of the most disastrous consequences of runaway warming, including food security threats, coastal inundation, extreme weather events, ecosystem shifts, and widespread species extinction.

To curtail climate change, individual countries have made a variety of pledges to reduce their share of emissions, but taken together, those promises simply aren’t enough.

According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “the gap between what we are doing and what we need to do has again grown, for the sixth year running.” The report adds that at current rates, we’re headed towards 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by the end of the century—twice the agreed upon rate. Here’s a breakdown of the paper’s major findings.

The study compares our current efforts to cut “carbon intensity”—measured by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per million dollars of economic activity—with what’s actually needed to rein in climate change. According to the report, the global economy needs to “decarbonize” by 6.2 percent every year until the end of the century to limit warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But carbon intensity fell by only 1.2 percent in 2013.

The report also found that the world is going to blow a hole in its carbon budget—the amount we can burn to keep the world from overheating beyond 3.6 degrees.

The report singles out countries that have done better than others when it comes to cutting carbon intensity. Australia, for example, tops the list of countries that have reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP, mainly due to lower energy demands in a growing economy. But huge countries like the United States, Germany, and India are still adding carbon intensity, year-on-year.

PricewaterhouseCoopers paints a bleak picture of a world that’s rapidly running out of time; the required effort to curb global emissions will continue to grow each year.

“The timeline is also unforgiving. The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and others have estimated that global emissions will need to peak around 2020 to meet a 2°C [3.6 degrees F] budget,” the report says. “This means that emissions from the developed economies need to be consistently falling, and emissions from major developing countries will also have to start declining from 2020 onwards.” G20 nations, for example, will need to cut their annual energy-related emissions by one-third by 2030, and by just over half by 2050. The pressure will be on the world’s governments to come up with a solution to this enormous challenge at the much-anticipated climate talks in Paris next year.

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 City of Johannesburg is proud announced the first green bond maturing in 2024. The bond of R1.46 billion is priced at 185 basis points (1.85%) above the R2023 Government Bond, which is very competitive and is a reflection of the City’s improved financial position.

Executive Mayor of Joburg, Clr Parks Tau says “This is the first green bond to be listed in the 2013/2014 financial year and marks a historic occasion, as Joburg is the first city in the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group to issue the Green bond.”

The City is pleased to announce that the bond auction was a success and 150 percent oversubscribed.

This funding demonstrates commitment to environmental stewardship and climate change, while receiving a market related financial return.

The Green Bond will provide the City with a funding source to improve and expedite the implementation of its climate change mitigation strategy and move the City towards a low carbon infrastructure, minimal resource reliance and increased preservation of natural resources.

What distinguishes this green bond from any other general obligation bond is that the projects to be financed are green initiatives such as the BioGas to Energy Project and the Solar Geyser Initiative, as well as all other projects that reduce greenhouse emissions and contribute to a resilient and sustainable city.

The City is not new to finding innovative funding mechanism as it also pioneered the first general obligation municipal bond in 2004. The City has successfully redeemed R1.9 billion since the inauguration of the municipal bond market including R900 million in the past 12 months.

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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Melbourne is now a carbon-neutral city, as certified by the Australian government’s independent carbon offsetting authority.

In an effort to become one of the world’s sustainable and liveable cities, Victoria’s capital has reduced and offset its carbon emissions, meeting the National Carbon Offset Standard set by Low Carbon Australia.

“We’re already one of the world’s most liveable cities, our challenge now is to ensure we are one of the world’s most sustainable cities,” said environment portfolio chair councilor Arron Wood.

At the core of Melbourne’s ambition to be a Zero Net Emissions metropolitan by 2020 are four areas where significant reductions have to made. These include the commercial sector with 25 percent less emissions from business-as-usual levels; the residential sector with 20 percent; the public transport sector with 20 percent, of which 15 percent fewer emissions will come from cars along with 100 percent increase in bicycle use; and the power sector with 18 percent from energy production.

To meet these targets, the City of Melbourne has been working with commercial building owners and apartment residents to lessen their water and energy use, and better manage waste and recycling. It is also helping businesses to enhance their buildings’ energy efficiency through the 1200 Buildings programme and generate fund renovations through Environmental Upgrade Agreements.

Furthermore, the city is encouraging “green” transportation such as bike networking and walking to prevent pollution from cars, as well as the use of low carbon and renewable energy sources for public transport.

According to Low Carbon Australia’s chief executive officer Meg McDonald, Melbourne’s carbon neutrality is a remarkable milestone in its journey towards sustainability.

“Quantifying the carbon footprint of such an organization and reducing carbon emissions is a mammoth task, but one that can have substantial benefits for the environment, the city and for ratepayers.”

Ms. McDonald said the city is also working to ensure it operates more efficiently, reducing waste and encouraging more sustainable business practices.

Melbourne now joins Sydney, as well as two other Victorian cities – Yarra and Moreland – as having earned carbon neutral status based on the National Carbon Offset Standard, according to a Government News.com.au report.

The C40, a network of megacities worldwide, suggested that cities account for 60 percent to 80 percent of the world’s energy and are responsible for more than 70 percent of carbon emissions.

As rapid urbanization continues to occur over the coming years, cities could also provide ideal solution to address climate change by making them sustainable initiatives such as energy, water and food efficiency; waste output, water and air pollution reduction; greenhouse gas emissions cuts.

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