[Cities 1.5 main theme music]  

00:00:03 David 

I'm David Miller and you're listening to Cities 1.5, a podcast by University of Toronto Press, produced in association with The Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy and C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 of the world's megacities, committed to accelerating climate action. C40's mission is to halve the emissions of its member cities within a decade, while improving equity, building resilience, and creating the conditions for everyone, everywhere to thrive. Join me as I connect with leading mayors, experts, policymakers, and youth leaders who are helping ensure a 1.5 degree world by leading city-based climate action. 

Each week, we delve into the necessary transformative solutions to today's most pressing climate challenges. The fight for an equitable and resilient world is closer than you think. [Cities 1.5 main theme music fades out] 

[urgent music] Striving for climate justice and resilience is one of the most important goals at C40, as well as at the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy and here at Cities 1.5. In fact, we're so passionate about this issue that volume 2.3 of the Journal will specifically be dedicated to climate justice and resilience. But what exactly is climate justice? How is this concept linked to resilience? And what does building resilience mean at the city level?

[upbeat, energetic music] At its core, climate justice and resilience recognizes that the impacts of climate change disproportionately affect more marginalized populations around the world, whether that be cities in the Global South, or low-income and communities of colour in the Global North. This means that the people in places least responsible for the problem are the ones who often bear the largest burden. From flooding and unstable housing to poor air quality and declining public health, every element of our environment evidences the negative effects of climate change and how unjust these impacts are.

The University of California's Center for Climate Justice tells us that there are six pillars: a just transition; social, racial, and environmental justice; Indigenous climate action; community resilience and adaptation; natural climate solutions; and climate education and engagement. While these pillars may seem daunting at first, they really boil down to one thing – collaboration towards equity needs to be at the centre of any effective climate strategy.

The core idea is that there can be no climate justice without social justice. Any actions to mitigate climate breakdown must be just, fair, and inclusive, and should benefit every community, leaving no one behind. But how can we make that happen at the city level, in a way that is actionable and equitable? [music fades out]

[light, rhythmic music] In this episode, we discuss the urgent need for climate justice and the tangible steps that cities can take to deliver it. First, we'll hear from Geci Karuri-Sebina, and Chandni Singh in an interview with Rachel Huxley, the Deputy Editor of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy and the Head of Climate Mitigation and Health at the Wellcome Trust. 

Geci and Chandni are experts who are on the cutting edge of their research fields, and offer unique perspectives on how cities—especially those in the Global South—can build resilience and address the missing gaps.

Next, I speak with Karen Chapple from the School of Cities at the University of Toronto which, not so coincidentally, happens to be our collaboration partner for this special issue. Karen and the School of Cities believe that cities are poised to lead the way in both devising and implementing solutions to the climate crisis. They work hard to develop social, scientific, technical, economic, and policy solutions to transform our energy systems. The School of Cities is helping Canada become a global clean energy model that can be used as a guide for communities and cities across the Global North. [music fades out]

[rhythmic music] Chandni Singh is a senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bangalore. At IIHS, she works on issues of climate change adaptation, differential vulnerability and wellbeing, disaster risk and recovery, livelihoods transitions, and rural to urban migration within the Global South. Her work examines the human dimensions of global environmental change, pathways for transformational change, and levers for equitable adaptation.

Geci Karuri-Sebina is an associate professor at the Wits School of Governance at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Her main area of research and practice is urban planning and governance, and she also has experience in development foresight, policy and innovation. In particular, her interest lies in the intersection between people, place, and technological change, focusing on the Global South.

Chandni and Geci both joined our guest host, Rachel, for a remote interview on June 27th, 2023. [music continues then fades out]

Rachel Huxley 06:26 

My name is Rachel Huxley and I'm delighted to be gatecrashing the podcast for an interview with two of our amazing editorial board, Geci Karuri-Sebina and Chandni Singh. I would like to start by telling the listeners a bit about your work and why you are supporting our special issue. So, to start with, can you both share, what is urban climate resilience and justice from your perspective? And Geci, I'll hand it over to you to start first.

Geci Karuri-Sebina 06:53 

Thanks so much, Rachel, and it's great to be in this conversation. So, for me, I suppose if I had to say it in a sentence, it would be about the survival of our species. That's kind of the way I think about it, because we're talking about figuring out by physically—you know, on this planet that we are co-inhabiting with all sorts of other stuff—but also socially, with each other in these urban sort of complexities we've created, how to really survive both, and then the reciprocal impacts between the two. So, if I really had to say it was about anything, for me, it would be about surviving these really two complex dynamics.

Rachel Huxley 07:30 

Amazing. That's a great definition to kick us off – our very survival. Chandni, how do you want to follow that up?

Chandni Singh 07:38 

Absolutely. I love the point of bringing in other species apart from human beings to the story of climate justice. For me, I think there are two sides to the climate justice thing. We know that every place, every person, really is affected by climate change, but we also know that certain people are differently affected by it. So, climate justice really is bringing this idea of differentiation and to correct wrongs from the past to enable us to provide opportunities that are not available to all when we think about solutions to climate change. So, for me, actually, climate justice is really that correcting the wrongs of the past.

Rachel Huxley 08:14 

Amazing. Thanks, both. So, we got the resilience aspect which is really about kind of how we're going to survive the complex challenges of climate change, and we've got the justice impact in terms of how people are affected differently and the injustices of the past and correcting those. And, just to sort of follow on from that, why is it important for you? I mean, that seems like a silly question, given it was about, Geci, your definition about survival, but what motivated you to support this special issue? And how do you hope it will contribute, particularly with our audience, to cities' efforts to increase resilience and, importantly, to do so in a just and equitable way?

Chandni Singh 08:53 

So cities, of course, I mean we know that they concentrate both climate risks but also inequalities, and I think they are this perfect space to think about, "How do we deal with some of these issues?" Most of the battles around climate justice are really being fought in cities and being experimented with in cities, so what I was particularly excited about in the special issue is that there's a lot of care gone into bringing in different kinds of voices, so it's not only researchers, but practitioners as well. And that's really exciting because we need multiple voices to talk about these complex issues.

Rachel Huxley 09:28 

Fantastic. Thanks, Chandni. And Geci?

Geci Karuri-Sebina 09:31 

So, I think very similarly. I mean, I've worked for about two decades now on development issues and studying the future and, in the second decade probably, it was in these times where issues of climate, climate justice, and just transitions in particular became increasingly focal, and I'm really keen to have a special issue like this that invites, as Chandni was saying, diverse perspectives into these really complex issues. And they're complex, not just, you know, scientifically complex, but just the political economy dimension I think is really a compounding of complexity because I think it's globally complex. In turn, we've seen some of those debates on a local level. It's incredibly contested and complex, and I think being able to have an issue like this that invites both diverse but also specific perspectives from around the world, and I've really seen the need for that, I think, having worked in the governance space.

Rachel Huxley 10:23 

So, the really important theme around making sure we get a diversity of perspective and voices, we'll come back to that in just a minute because I want to ask you both about how practitioners and academics can best work together. But you both mentioned the sort of special issue and diverse voices in there. We've already got really interesting submissions from a range of folk around themes such as green gentrification, rainwater harvesting, and environmental health and equity. Why is this sort of research important? And why, and how, would you encourage cities to engage with these sorts of themes and the work that we've got in this special issue?

Geci Karuri-Sebina 11:00 

[light pizzicato string and percussive music] So, I think what I really love about the diverse range of topics, but also their specificities in the papers we saw coming into this special issue, is that they allow us to have an engagement that goes beyond the abstractions we kind of tend to discuss these issues in. But I think it's so much more powerful and so much more significant for those participating in the conversation, but also for the audiences to these conversations, so where there is contextualized, specific knowledge about what is happening, where it's happening, how it's happening, what was proposed, how that went. It sounds like a silly thing to say, but I think that's the most important way for us to learn and to find each other. It's much more difficult to get into debate and finger pointing where there are actual cases and there's empathy for something specific that's happening. I think it's really important, not just for practitioners, but in fact, also for politicians to really be able to engage at that sort of a level. [music fades out]

Rachel Huxley 11:53 

Mm. Great. Yeah, and I completely agree. I think climate change, in general, is quite an abstract concept, right? So, unless we can land it in a way that means something for people, you know, it really just sort of gets lost as this abstract conversation, exactly as you say. Yeah, thank you. Chandni?

Chandni Singh 12:08 

Yeah, absolutely. I've been involved with the IPCC for the past three, four years, and we just deal often in abstraction, these big data sets, so it's really nice to actually talk about case studies that are rooted in local realities. A lot of policymakers often look at us to give examples of these case studies, and people are interested in, of course, learning more about their places, and what's happening, but also a lot of cross learning between cities, between communities, so I feel that these examples of, say, rainwater harvesting, green gentrification, even as a person living in a city myself, I'm interested in learning more about these, so I think our audience also would really appreciate them. That's why I was excited to see these case studies really in the Journal.

Rachel Huxley 12:54 

Fantastic. And it's one of the things that we've talked about – how important case studies are for cities to see examples of real action, and how they can then really learn from that and transfer some of the examples and the actions that they're seeing. You mentioned the IPCC reporting process as well, because one of the things we wanted to do in the Journal was capture some of the great work that's happening in cities in a peer-reviewed format, so that it can be incorporated into that intergovernmental panel on climate change and the process of evidence there.

So, more generally talking about the aims of the Journal in terms of providing city decision-makers and action takers with the best and latest insights from academia, and that's really to support them exactly as you've been mentioning, in policymaking and in implementation. And, specifically, with this special issue, we aim to solicit research and the latest evidence on climate resilience and justice, and I wanted to ask both of you, what do you see as the role of research and evidence in supporting action and progress, because you've both had long careers, you've got lots of experience and expertise in both the academic field and seeing that action on the ground? How and where do you see research sort of having an impact? And, how would you like to see academics and practitioners working together? You both talked about the importance of diverse voices. How do we get all those voices coming together, and what's the benefit when we do?

Chandni Singh 14:22 

I think, as someone who [chuckles lightly] self identifies as a researcher, I think there's a lot of importance and relevance of research and just scientific knowledge – and, by science, I'm not only focusing on the narrow meaning of the term, but actually the social sciences and arts and humanities and all of that, just ways of understanding the world. So, I think that there are many people who argue about the post-science world, but I feel that we are still in a space that needs research and science – of course, what we don't do well as researchers, and that's why again, platforms like this journal, but also other science policy spaces can allow us to have better conversations, again with empathy and humility, with other people who create knowledge, who make sense of the world.

And now, there's a lot more focus on creating these science policy interfaces, so I feel that, of course, to make good, meaningful, inclusive decisions for climate justice, we do need to base it on experiences and rigorous research, and I feel that we cannot take away from the importance of that. So, that importance of having these conversations continues. There are different ways to do it. Journals are one way, of course, but for long, journals, I think, have also been quite a restrictive space where only certain people can access them; there are gatekeepers to journals, and I think opening out the journal format by bringing in practitioners, bringing in voices from policy, also helps sort of start thinking about how research can be put into use better.

Rachel Huxley 15:52 

Geci, coming to you then, just to sort of give your views on what you see is the role of research and evidence in supporting action and progress and how you feel like academics and practitioners and others could work together.

Geci Karuri-Sebina 16:03 

Really, really in agreement with Chandni on this one in terms of the need to have a shared dialogue space, but also share dialogue content. And so, this does that, I think. So, we've got not just some shared knowledge bases, but maybe also some reference points, and for those to be diverse, because it doesn't help to try and have a conversation where the reference points don't actually resonate, that's another, you know, tick for diversity on the special issue.

But, I think also where we can go further is the co-production of knowledge between researchers and practitioners. It's something I've long fantasized about. I don't know if I've seen enough of that happening yet [chuckles lightly] in my academic space. It's something I'd like to create more space for because I often feel like there are people who are deeply engaged in doing things, even in industry, certainly an invasion of governance and government, but don't have the head space or the inclination to really write about it, and maybe not even the time to reflect on it. And then, you've got academics who are really keen, I think, to tap into that knowledge, and if we could get that right, I feel like we'd crack something important. So, I think we're taking a step in the right direction.

And then, of course, I'm hoping that a journal like this feeds into our education and training and leadership programs, because I think it lends itself to that. I'm really kind of worried sometimes when I look at how old, outdated, traditional a lot of content and a lot of education tends to be, in spite of there being live, new content – case studies, knowledge that journalists continually bring out. There are people deliberately investing time in building their own capabilities and their knowledge, and I think, if we can contribute to what they can tap into, that's amazing.

Rachel Huxley 17:37 

Fantastic. Finally, I wanted to ask a couple of parting questions. You both have a huge amount of experience in this field and in thinking about urban climate resilience and justice. From that experience, what would be the main insights from academic research that you would share with city practitioners, so the best bit of evidence that they could draw on or the main findings that they can leverage to drive action?

Chandni Singh 18:04 

[gentle music] Two things that I'd like to focus on – the first one, of course, is repeatedly we see, in policymaking, that policies are being made for yesterday's climate change, or today's climate change, so this focus on past climate trends, and often that's because the capacities to sort of understand climate change tend to be such that they focus on past trends of rainfall and temperature, and so on. But we know very clearly that there's a huge research initiative of all kinds, from different parts of the world really, to downscale climate projections and show what's going to happen in the future, and gone are the days when we don't have enough information at the kind of scales we need to make decisions. So, I am all the time advocating for policymakers to build research collaborations, and then sort of first understand future projections and then start thinking about building capacities to use them in actual decision making. [music fades out] It's a tough one. There's a lot of research on it to show why things don't work the way we want them to work, but I think we really need to start reorienting climate action, climate planning to think about the future rather than only looking at the past.

The second thing that is really close to my heart is climate literacy and trying to focus on building sort of literacy around climate change – just the core concepts. Also then, what those core concepts mean for particular people. I think there's a lot one can do. At least in my organization, IHS, we have actually developed a vocabulary or a lexicon, of sorts, of climate change concepts in six Indian languages, because we know that climate change and the words that we use to talk about these things in English often don't carry well when we talk to sub-national decision makers. So, that's just one example, but I think there needs to be more of this translation, but then moving beyond to climate literacy, I think to inform decision-making.

Rachel Huxley 19:59 

Two really great bits of advice—or evidence, I suppose—for practitioners in terms of thinking about and using future forecasts. That data exists and we should be using it and thinking about how we talk about climate change, and particularly, I think, complex subjects like resilience and justice. Thanks so much Chandni. Geci, what would be your main insights?

Geci Karuri-Sebina 20:21 

I couldn't agree more on the futures point, and that's usually my flag to wave so I'm glad that's been raised already. [laughs] It allows me to comment on other things. Let me add, too, to the pot; I'm really interested in some of the indigenous scholarship that's coming out and I've actually got a PhD student right now, as well, who's doing some interesting research on indigenous strategies for resilience or indigenous strategy for various aspects, whether it's adaptation or just surviving where they are, so these very contextual studies. And I think what's really important, because I think what focusing on that kind of research, as well, does, and here I'll maybe refer to Anil Gupta's work on diversity and the work of Jinan K.B. on biological learning, so wonderful Indian scholars doing work that is hugely important, but it really begins to tell us that the solutions aren't out there yet for a lot of what we are facing, but there is a lot we couldn't be learning from that we're not bringing onto the table, because we choose not to see it. So, I think it's really useful for people to look into those areas of research as well, and you might find, in your backyard, that's quite interesting knowledge, quite interesting experience that really could add to the arsenal.

And then, the other sort of bigger, higher-order thing I'd raise as well is, at our university, we've become quite interested in sort of the whole mission-oriented innovation approach, and I think that does offer something in the climate space, because we've got to build more dynamic capabilities in our states. And whether the state is at a city level or the national level or at a global level, we've really got to talk about the capabilities there to engage with these complex issues and sort of these pluricrises that we're facing. One can get overwhelmed by the enormity of that, but I suppose some of these mission-oriented approaches allow us to pick on particular issues, and just talk about building robust ideas, but also robust capabilities. So, I think that has to be part of how we understand the knowledge issue here. That is not just about knowledge, about climate change, but it's also insight about ourselves, so not just, "How do we do better?" "How can we be better as people, but also as systems of governance?" I think that's really important. I don't think there's quite enough research in this space, but there is some, and I'd love to see that grow.

Rachel Huxley 22:31 

So, just to finish then, I wanted to ask one example of urban climate resilience and justice that gives you both hope.

Geci Karuri-Sebina 22:42 

Hmm. Now, she leaves the trickiest one for last. I must say that I have been quite interested in some of the decentralized approaches that I've seen being experimented on in our parts, so approaches that say that, "Look, maybe we don't have a grid solution for everybody, but we could allow sort of innovation to happen in a very diffused way and find a way to support that". I think that's really important, both for resilience and for justice, to allow many flowers to bloom. So, I don't know, again, if I see quite enough of it, but I think that appreciation that we may need to try different things, we may need to listen to different voices, we may need to appreciate different actors, that gives me a bit of hope that maybe we're on the right track.

Rachel Huxley 23:22 

I love that analogy of allowing many flowers to bloom. That's brilliant. Chandni?

Chandni Singh 23:27 

I think the first thing that gives me a lot of hope is actually that I don't have to explain what I do any longer, because there is so much more awareness around climate change now. It wasn't there 10 years ago, so that gives me hope. But, on a serious note, I guess, for me also it's quite linked to what Geci said really about, when I go out and interact with grassroots, non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, the kind of work that they have been doing and the pivot that they've made from doing, say, 20 years ago, work around delivering development or just having, say, water and sanitation programs or education programs, and how now they have been able to add this layer of building climate resilience to their work. [pensive music] I think that's really good to see, primarily because these NGOs have been working for marginalized communities on behalf of them and they already have justice values anchoring them from the start. So, it's good when those kinds of organizations come onto the climate change bandwagon, rather than new organizations coming up and then rediscovering communities and networks and all of that. So, that gives me a lot of hope that more people are now joining climate change rather than questioning whether it's happening or not. 

Rachel Huxley 24:45 

It's certainly a very changed world. Well, I think that's the perfect note of optimism to end on – the idea of allowing many flowers to bloom and the idea that, you know, people get it now and we're seeing so much grassroots action towards that across all of these spaces and these diversities of people and contributions. So, thank you both so much for your time. It's been fantastic talking to you. Looking forward to seeing what more examples of climate resilience and justice we see in the future. [music continues then fades out]

David 25:29

[light, rhythmic music] Karen Chapple is the Director of the School of Cities and Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. Her main areas of focus in her studies is inequality in the planning, development, and governance of regions in the Americas, with a focus on economic development and housing. Currently, Karen is engaged in many research projects related to inequality and sustainability planning, with a focus on residential and commercial industrial displacement. She provides policy advice to many local, state, and national elected officials. Karen joined me remotely for a discussion on May 17th, 2023. [music continues then fades out]

Karen, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Can you talk a little bit about the School of Cities, about your role there as Director and what the School of Cities is all about?

Karen Chapple 26:27 

Sure. So, the School of Cities is a multidisciplinary think/do tank at the University of Toronto. It comes out of President Meric Gertler's aspirations for the campus, and we encompass 250 faculty affiliates across 40 departments, so we are truly multidisciplinary. We bring in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, the professional schools. We work together on complex urban challenges with the idea that, if we can address challenges like climate, like inequality at the urban scale, then we can address them globally, given the share of population that lives in cities.

I just would add that I actually am a newcomer to Canada. I arrived two years ago, after spending 20 years at the University of California, Berkeley in the planning department, and one of the things I learned at Berkeley was the powerful role of government agencies in sponsoring multidisciplinary research to address societal problems, and in the case of California, it was really about climate. So, climate research is a very high priority in California. It has been since the early days where California was regulating tailpipe emissions and trying to push for greater fuel efficiency in automobiles, enacted a set of regulations, followed up with AB 32, which was to regulate greenhouse gas emissions more generally across the state, including from factories and from land use and transportation patterns. And that was followed by cap and trade legislation, and that cap and trade legislation had, built into it, a mandate for research and funded hundreds of millions of dollars on research on climate with a requirement that it be community engaged. This was sort of my background.

My research was funded through these different agencies in California for many, many years, thinking about sustainability in that context. And so, then I come to Canada and it made me think a lot about, you know, "How do we actually spur that kind of innovative and applied and community engaged research in this context?" So the School of Cities is a fabulous laboratory to kind of enact a program like this.

David 29:18 

So, it's very interesting to hear about California because it's my understanding that the history of the work on climate change in California can be traced back to the work on air quality in California--

Karen Chapple 29:33 

Exactly. 

David 29:32 

--which goes back for a long time, and there's wonderful historic photos—well, not wonderful, maybe depressing—of people wearing gas masks because the air was so bad, which of course had a health impact on everybody, particularly low-income people of that generation.

Karen Chapple 29:50 

Yeah, that's right.

David 29:50 

In that context, California prioritized research, science, and equity in its way it was trying to address climate. Maybe we can talk a bit about how you've brought that philosophy to the University of Toronto and to its work and focus on cities. 

Karen Chapple 30:39 

Sure. Yeah. So, the University of Toronto has been incredibly innovative. It has some of the best climate researchers in Canada and maybe the world, is doing its own kind of geothermal facility on campus which will help bring it to clean energy and reduce its energy consumption to net zero, but it had not yet kind of linked the issues of climate change to the entrenched inequalities and disparities that our cities and regions are facing. And thus, they kind of need to address this.

So, Canada is facing rising income inequality. Much of North America is recovering from systemic racism. [light, upbeat music] Many of the advanced industrial countries are facing challenges in terms of upward mobility. Kind of the expectations that you and I had growing up, David, are not available to our children and our grandchildren. And so, with all these economic issues going on, you know, our children are facing this lack of opportunity at the same time as they're facing the climate crisis. So, in our spirit of working holistically and busting silos, of thinking across issue areas, we thought, "Well, we should really focus on both climate and justice, the intersection of the two, and then how that plays out, particularly in cities," because you've written the book on it. Cities are the solution, and I truly believe that, that this is not only where the innovation happens; it's also where the resilience is, and we've proven, crisis after crisis, that urban communities come together to address issues and to implement innovations that perhaps are hatched in the ivory tower, but really need to be tested out in the real world. [music fades out] So, that's why the focus on climate and justice. You know, a fabulous amount of work being done on climate science, but not so much on how climate change is going to disproportionately affect those that are most at risk already from various economic factors.

David 33:03 

Well, it's a very serious issue I think, within cities, between cities, between countries. We certainly see that the impact of climate on lower-income countries is extreme. The impact of extreme weather events, even within higher-income countries and higher-income cities can be really significant. Can you talk about how, as a think-and-do tank, you take that very clear idea that we really do need to address climate justice and provoke the needed thinking and research and find the money to do the work? What's the role of School of Cities and its role as a think-and-do tank in making that happen?

Karen Chapple 33:50 

We are often in the position, first of all, of convening, and secondly, mobilizing knowledge. So, right when I arrived, I gave out $600,000 almost to researchers to do work on climate and justice in cities, and that was given with some strings attached. We asked our researchers, first of all, to co-create their research designs with stakeholders so, from the outset, the stakeholders would be part of determining, "What data is necessary? What are the questions we should ask? Where do we want to end up at the end of the research?" 

And then, we asked them to meet with the stakeholders throughout, and then also to disseminate their knowledge in a forum that is not just going to get them another peer-reviewed journal article, but also reach a much broader audience, and we think very carefully about those audiences. "Can we reach grandma? Do we need to go on TikTok to reach the kids? Should we put out a interactive map of air quality hotspots in the Greater Toronto region?" So, this is the type of thing we like to do in School of Cities.

David 35:13 

You talked about the School of Cities and the grants mandating engagement with stakeholders. Can you talk a bit more about, in the context of climate justice, who would be the nature of the stakeholders that researchers should be thinking about, ideally?

Karen Chapple 35:33 

In general, we're working with policymakers at multiple levels of government and trying to work with them simultaneously because you have to engage at all levels simultaneously. We're talking in the Canadian context, of course, the regional municipality, as well, and then the province and the federal government. That's really key, but then also the communities where this is going to land. I mean, we're never going to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, tailpipe emission, and improve air quality unless people understand how poor their air quality is, and how their own travel behaviour is contributing to it and having detrimental impacts on their own health.

So ultimately, we have to work closely with the communities, make sure that they understand the research, that they are getting products that they can use and bring back, whether it's in the classroom or the community centre, or just, you know, the kitchen table so that they can actually take action themselves on what we've learned.

David 36:40 

For listeners who are outside Canada, I should explain Ontario, Canada's somewhat complicated forms of government. There are three orders of government: the federal government; the provincial government, which in many countries would be called a state; and city governments. But there are also regional governments, in some parts of Ontario where Karen and I are, in Toronto. The City of Toronto today used to be five cities and one borough and a region and was amalgamated in 1997. But around it, there are a variety of cities, all of which have regional governments, who are often responsible for broader issues like water, the environment, sometimes public health, that crossed the whole region – public transit, for example. So, there are cities, but there are also, at some places, regions that are around them, that share responsibilities for some of these issues.

I think we've got a really clear understanding of why, from the academic perspective, climate justice is so critical, you know, how you came to this coming out of California where there was significant work put into climate justice, to climate air quality, the impact of air quality on health, including through the differential impact, based on people who are vulnerable economically. Can you speak then to resilience? How do we think about resilience through a climate justice perspective? How do we help neighbourhoods, communities, people adapt to challenges, find ways to be part of the solution, build resilience in the face of climate events, and in the face of economic challenges? And how does a think-and-do tank provoke the right kind of research into that issue, research that can make a real difference and not just be part of a think tank, but be part of a do tank?

Karen Chapple 38:50 

Yeah. Here, it might be best if I start to talk a little bit about the research that is coming out in the climate and justice vein, and I have a great example which is a research done out of the Centre for Global Engineering at U of T, Yu Cheng and Amy Bilton too, working on water harvesting in Mexico City, and it is an incredible example of climate resilience. So, here you have Mexico City, and you know the story of Mexico City is that it's sinking. It's been sinking for a long time. The subsidence is a huge issue. And meanwhile, you have households drawing water out of the water table, and so it makes it even worse. Then, you have almost 20% of the population still on pipes, not getting piped water into the house. And then, you have climate issues compounding everything – you know, irregular rainfall patterns, and in some years, increasing drought, and so you have a big need to harvest water.

Now, this is something that the government in Mexico is on top of. There's a program that was initiated by a local NGO and got enacted to help many different communities in the peri-urban areas, the periphery of Mexico City, to help harvest water. So, great. We know there's a problem. We have a solution – water harvesting. We know how to do that. It's actually been done, you know, for thousands of years in Latin and Central America, so it's actually traditional technology. The issue, though, is implementation and how do you get communities to, on a daily basis, harvest water and treat it? And it turns out that communities are not necessarily excited about doing water harvesting, and our researchers' surveys and interviews show actually tremendous fear about, for instance, chlorine, and reluctance to use chlorine in the water. [gentle music] But it's really quite necessary in order to have clean water.

And so, the issue turns out to be that you can't just put in infrastructure and walk away and consider the problem solved. You then have to have active and engaged implementation, and not only that; you probably need to get the community in on the infrastructure development right from the onset, right from the planning phase, so that they're ready, and that they understand. It takes time for people, for instance, to overcome their fears about chemicals in the water, like chlorine, so you have to kind of plant those seeds very early on, and in the places that have done that, you see that you have that community resilience, you have that willingness to jump in and embrace these alternative technologies, which are really going to be necessary for the survival of Mexico City into the future as water conditions change. [music fades out]

David 42:00 

It's an ongoing theme of some of the interviews we've done about equity issues. Engaging people where they are, listening to them, and having them be co-creators of the solutions is really critical in all of this process, and it's interesting to hear the same kind of thing coming in research about Mexico City. Given your background with this very interesting and substantial government funding from California on a range of climate issues, including equity, do you have any reflections about your first couple of years at the University of Toronto and the fairly significant, in our context, investment that School of Cities has just made in research on these equity themes? Any lessons learned about how to ensure that the research is relevant, meaningful, and impactful, that it is part of a do, not just part of a think?

Karen Chapple 42:59 

Yeah, so our Climate, Justice and Cities program is just kind of a drop in the bucket, and to actually have impact and to grow both the research and the implementation side is really going to take the government embracing it. And again, the California example is instructive. The California government saw that its funding was siloed, that it was spending money on air quality at the California Air Resources Board, it was spending money on housing in the housing department, it was spending money on parks in the parks department, and then it was spending money in transportation, the bulk of which actually goes to repaving roads.

And what they realized is that you're not able to meet your smart growth goals and your greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals if you don't have those agencies talking to each other. So, they put together, first of all, something called the Strategic Growth Council, which I really wish other governments around the world would adopt. The Strategic Growth Council works across all these agencies to think about a comprehensive, strategic approach to research and implementation around climate. And then, working groups or agency working groups that coordinate and help to make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, and this is really, really important in order to advance, not only the state of knowledge, because again, problems don't just lie in one discipline.  The solution to problems aren't just in one discipline; they are almost always multidisciplinary, requiring multiple perspectives. I'm a planner, but I need engineering, and I need business and economics, and I need sociology to help me solve any planning problem, let alone arts and culture, which is helpful too. So, understanding that, not just at the university level, but at the agency level, the folks that are out there doing implementation, needing to understand the complexity of these issues, and this is what's coming out in our research.

So, I just gave you an example of water harvesting in Mexico. Well, that paper is a collaboration between a sociologist and an engineer. It really took both of them to kind of figure out what was going wrong with the implementation of water harvesting. And we've other work that's on health and environment and health, and to understand the impact of urban heat islands and air quality hotspots on local health. So, you can't just work in your silo in order to either come up with solutions, but also to implement, because ultimately, we can’t just regulate our way out of it through air quality. We're going to have to have health practitioners engaged, and transport agencies helping, as well. So, getting that lesson across, I think, first to researchers who are so siloed and then to the implementers is really key.

David 46:03 

Well, Karen, I can assure you, speaking on behalf of governments, that working across silos is always a challenge, but when you can make it happen, there's a magic moment and, you know, we don't work in silos here at the Centre. We do a lot of economics, as well, so we might send a message over to California that it's time to start thinking about non-growth scenarios and prosperity and, you know, how we build economies that meet everybody's needs without relying on GDP growth. Karen, if you can talk a bit more about why this research and silo busting, the equity, why does that matter for cities, and city governments and the mayors that lead them?

Karen Chapple 46:47 

I often feel like cities are the most neglected level of government, and it's truly the most under resourced level of government, so the obligation of universities, like the University of Toronto, that gets some public funding in the US, the land grant universities, it's really their obligation to give back and help fortify the public sector, which is so ill prepared to deal with these incredibly complex challenges.

And studying cities is fascinating business. Cities are the best place to study these types of phenomena because we can look at all these factors together and how they interact. We can really see the transportation, land use, housing issues, and for instance, we have a paper in this issue which is looking at air quality and Peel and looks at the relationship to vulnerability and realizes that it's actually only in the areas that are suffering from an acute housing affordability crisis, that you're having these extreme air quality impacts on residents. So, there's a close link here, between the air quality issues in the housing affordability crisis because, where there's lack of supply and where people are building out on the fringe, or you know, the worst air quality in Peel is near the airport. You just have sprawl there. People drive till they qualify, right? So, that sprawl and the air quality are closely linked, and we wouldn't have been able to have that lens were we not in a city where we can see these phenomena playing out. And if we can crack the nut in cities, then we can crack it anywhere.

David 48:29 

Peel is the region just outside Toronto, which includes most of Pearson International Airport, except a tiny corner which is still in Toronto. It's interesting, the comment you made, because the link between these environmental issues and poverty and wealth, I don't think is a new one. [pensive music] I seem to recall, historically, the ultra-rich built on hills and everybody else didn't have that opportunity and, you know, we do seem to see neighbourhood-based health and other impacts, including the impact of climate be highly correlated with economic circumstances.

Well, we look forward to the research which is going to develop these and other ideas, and we all look forward to much more work from the University of Toronto, and the School of Cities to help us all make the right decisions quickly, so we can all think and do. Thank you so much for being on Cities 1.5 and for your ongoing work and leadership. It's tremendously important and much appreciated.

Karen Chapple 49:35 

Thank you, David, for all that you do and C40, as well. [music continues then fades out]

David 49:45 

[upbeat, energetic music] It is an undeniable fact that the impacts of climate change are unfolding precipitously around the globe, and to make matters worse, the timing and symptoms are uncertain and unpredictable and affect all manner of different places. Planning for adaptation needs to shift from predict-and-prevent to improvement of urban resilience, which involves the ability to learn and adapt to climate shocks in specific contexts. Resilience requires openness to innovation and change. It necessitates a renewed focus on climate justice to ensure that the most vulnerable among us can be better protected and recover from climate stresses. [music continues then fades out]

[Cities 1.5 main theme music]  On the next episode of Cities 1.5, we're talking about climate communications in shifting the narrative. We all know that climate change actions benefit from greater attention, but how do you actually make that happen? My guests for this topic bring expertise, data, and passion to the discussion. Andrea Everett, Senior Director of Survey Research and Data Science at Climate Nexus, Lori Lodes, Executive Director at Climate Power, and students Alyssa, Adrian, and Zainab from a Toronto middle school. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already. You won't want to miss it.

Thanks for listening to Cities 1.5. I'm David Miller, the Managing Director of the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. I was the Mayor of Toronto, Canada, and know, first-hand, the impact cities can have in solving the climate crisis.

Cities 1.5 is produced by Jessica Schmidt. Our executive producers are Isabel Sitcov, Peggy Whitfield, Jessica Abraham, and Claudia Rupnik. Our music is by Lorna Gilfedder. Cities 1.5 is a production of the University of Toronto Press and the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy.

To find out more, visit the show’s website link in the episode notes. See you next time. [Cities 1.5 main theme music ends]