Page 58 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 1

Climate Change Crisis And Cities

Figure 3: SDG11 goals (UNDP, 2022b)
When climate change and cities are studied together, the most important
strategies for developing solutions in the fight against climate change include
mitigation of greenhouse gases and adaptation to existing effects of climate
change. Especially climate change adaptation actions are expected to provide
benefits towards protecting sensitive groups and low-income neighborhoods
adaing the effect of climate change. In 2015, World Bank defined the “poverty
line”, which refers to the minimum living costs for people in the poorest
countries, as $1,90. According to this definition, around 10% of the world
population today lives below the poverty line (World Bank, 2022). UN Global
Commission on Adaptation estimates that another 100 million people will
start to live below the porverty line by 2030 (Boland et al., 2021: 6). Especially
low-income groups lack the capaticty and resources necessary to fight the
effects of climate change and adapt to them. These groups are also more
likely to be effected by disasters experienced in cities due climate change
(IPCC, 2014).
Strategies towards providing climate resilience in all activities, city residents
and particularly these vulnerable groups, are also mentioned in the New
Urban Agenda issued in UN Habitat III Conference held in 2016. For the
sake of creating cities resillient to climate change, the document suggests
reducing the use of fossil fuels, developing energy-efficient planning and
design approaches, and increasing the use of renewable energy sources as
well as green infra-structure in the cities (UN Habitat, 2016).
As obvious seen in these examples, the importance of cities is emphasized
not only in UN SDGs, but also in the New Urban Agenda, and it was highlighted
that these are points to consider in the fight against climate change. In

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