Cities 1.5
Cities 1.5
Resilient cities (and how to build them)
Cities around the world are on the frontlines of climate disaster. In Lisbon, Portugal, unprecedented flooding has required the construction of significant climate resilience projects like the city's drainage master plan. In the global south, cities like Ahmedabad, India are getting hotter and hotter…and the women who live in this region are disproportionately impacted physically and financially by heat wave events. But as we can see through the shining examples of both these urban centres, by combining mitigation and adaptation actions - like innovative parametric heat insurance projects, and equitable public transportation initiatives - with community informed policies, we can build resilient cities that will be able to withstand the increasing impacts of climate change.
Featured guests:
Carlos Moedas, Mayor of Lisbon
Kathy Baughman McLeod , CEO, Climate Resilience for All
Links:
10 of the Oldest Continuously Inhabited Cities in the World - How Stuff Works
Horizon Europe - European Commission
The US brain drain has begun - Politico
Lisbon approved free public transport for young and elderly residents - Mayors of Europe
Lisbon Mayor Wants Companies to Help Fix City’s Housing Shortage - Bloomberg
Lisbon aims to be carbon neutral by 2030 with EU support - LPP
Heat and gender: Enhancing her resilience to rising temperatures - World Bank
World-First Financial Product Combining Insurance and Cash Payments for Extreme Heat is a Lifeline for 50,000 Informal Women Workers in India - Climate Resilience for All
If you want to learn more about the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, please visit our website: https://jccpe.utpjournals.press/
Cities 1.5 is produced by the University of Toronto Press and Cities 1.5 is supported by C40 Cities and the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. You can sign up to the Centre newsletter here. https://thecentre.substack.com/
Our executive producers are Calli Elipoulos and Peggy Whitfield.
Produced by Jess Schmidt: https://jessdoespodcasting.com/
Edited by Morgane Chambrin: https://www.morganechambrin.com/
Music is by Lorna Gilfedder: https://origamipodcastservices.com/
[Cities 1.5 theme music]
David 00:00
I am David Miller and you’re listening to Cities 1.5, a podcast exploring how cities are leading global change through local climate action. [music ends]
[whimsical music] What came first, civilization or the city? The historical consensus is that at some point in the latter part of the 4th millennium BC human society underwent a profound shift. We moved from nomadic agricultural-based communities to huge and complex urban centers. The world’s first cities were the birthplace of writing, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and more, and still shape our thinking to this day. But the very fact that cities such as Jericho, Damascus, and others are still standing are a testament to their resilience and the resilience of the people who lived and still live within their walls. Walls which have seen the rise and fall of civilizations, and have withstood the more recent ravages of war and violence and an uncertain future. [music ends]
[slow rhythmic music] But cities and all of us who live in them face new dangers. The climate crisis poses an existential threat, one that cannot be overcome by technology or trade or new cultural ideas. But cities also continue to be the places where innovation, community and profound societal shifts can build resilience against worsening climate impacts, such as extreme heat, flooding, wildfires, air pollution, and more. Science and the urban leaders who uphold scientific principles can form the bedrock of policies which lead us away from the burning of fossil fuels and overconsumption of natural resources. Cities and the people who call them home are nothing if not adaptable, finding new ways to protect and safeguard our way of life and the planet and proving once again the resilience of the human spirit and the urban fabric they’ve created. [music continues then ends]
[fast rhythmic music] At C40, we know that cities and their mayors are on the forefront of building resilience across the world. In this week’s episode, we’ll be hearing about an innovative heat insurance project for women in the C40 city of Ahmedabad, one of India’s hottest urban centers. Kathy McLeod Baughman is the co-author of an article outlining the initiative in a special issue of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy focusing on public health, which will be published this May.
But first, I speak with Mayor Carlos Moedas of Lisbon about the transformation of his city into a leading European scientific, cultural and innovation hub, and how one new project is creating resilience for the local population in the face of increasing droughts and floods. [music ends]
Carlos Moedas 03:19
[phone rings] [whooshing] So, Carlos Moedas here in Lisbon, Portugal. [handset clicks]
David 03:28
Mayor, welcome to Cities 1.5.
Carlos Moedas 03:31
Thank you so much, David. Great pleasure to be with with you here at this amazing podcast.
David 03:37
Well, hopefully our listeners are going to learn much more about the lovely and amazing city of Lisbon and the work that’s happening under your leadership there. Could you talk a little bit about your agenda as mayor of Lisbon?
Carlos Moedas 03:52
I’m an engineer by training, and so I’ve worked most of my life as an engineer in the sustainability area. As a hydraulics engineer. I was appointed to be the European Commissioner of Portugal in the European Union, and at the time President Junker gave me the responsibility of leading, really, the biggest innovation science program of the world called Horizon Europe today, called Horizon 2020 at the time, which is a hundred billion Euro program for science and innovation in research. And so my influence as a mayor comes from there. I mean, I’m a big believer that science and innovation are the big drivers of getting a society that is united and not divided. So now I have the possibility and the privilege to basically get all that knowledge and everything that I’ve done at the European level at the city level, and that’s something that I was always very passionate about because I think, really, cities are the laboratory, are the places where you can test innovation and that you can really create different things that make our lives better and that create more jobs.
I’m a very different type of mayor, at least the typical mayor here in Portugal. I come from more national roles than local, but I think of everything I’ve done in my life that this is the greatest privilege and an amazing job to be a mayor. As you know by your experienced David, you know, that is an amazing position where you are in contact with people that you solve real problems in a concrete way.
David 05:33
[whimsical music] It is an amazing privilege. I think you’ve put it so well. I do find it interesting that you came from an innovation background and, of course, that you’re an engineer, because that is rare, at least in North America, to have engineers run for office and terrific. Can you talk a little bit about what’s happening in Lisbon under your leadership on the innovation side of things?
Carlos Moedas 05:55
When I was a European commissioner, I wanted to create a new institution in Europe just about innovation. Because Europe has been an amazing center for the creation of knowledge, so if you look at the top papers and the top researchers and the top grants in terms of research, we have the best of the world with an institution called the European Research Council where you give grants of 2 million, 3 million Euros for researchers to do whatever they want. You have no restrictions. [music ends]
[slow rhythmic music] And so my idea was to transfer that to innovation and create an institution called the European Innovation Council. What at the time I felt is that we needed the pipeline of those projects, of those companies that can scale up to be unicorns, and so we need cities. Because it’s not about the countries, it’s about the cities. Innovation happens in cities. You know it by, really, scientific evidence. You know it happens in cities because in cities you have diversity, you have different ways of thinking, you have different people, and innovation only happens with different people. With people that think differently. People that have different religions, different backgrounds, different ways of looking at the world. [music ends]
And so I created in Lisbon this place called the Unicorn Factory where we tried to attract, first, unicorns from all over the world to set up offices in Lisbon, and so I was kind of like a salesperson. I went around the world to try to convince them to come and set up at least a [10-person 07:31] office in Lisbon. And so, 14 unicorns decided to actually do it, and so we have now 14 unicorns that set up offices. Sometimes 10 people. This year we got the Tribeca film festival to come to Lisbon and basically do the Tribeca Europe—the Tribeca Festival in Lisbon at the Unicorn Factory because of these diversities and these crossing in between innovation and culture. So, innovation has been one of my, really, subject, also by what I’ve done previously but because I really feel innovation is probably the only way out if you want to create jobs. There’s no other way of creating jobs other from innovation. Politicians don’t create jobs.
David 08:22
So, just for those who aren’t familiar with the tech sector, unicorn means an emerging company that’s going to succeed or has started to succeed out of all the ones who are trying to succeed. Is that a fair way to describe the term?
Carlos Moedas 08:37
So, the term is basically a company that is worth more than a billion euros.
David 08:40
Ah, okay.
Carlos Moedas 08:42
And so it’s a company that was able to grow to a billion euros in a very quick way. And so in this world of tech, they call it the unicorn. To be frank, I don’t care if it’s a billion euros, I just care if they create jobs, if they bring to the city this cultural diversity that is so important for us. The Second World War was also the port that actually brought a lot of the people that were basically running away from Europe because of the Nazis that came through Lisbon to go to the US. You know, if you think of the world of today and you think that unfortunately you’ll see different similarities here, but now what I see is this reverse movement. So we have, just to give you an idea, more US citizens than ever coming and basically living in Lisbon, and a lot of them are amazing scientists and amazing innovators. My message is that everyone is welcome and that cities are a safe harbor, and the city of Lisbon, by definition because the name of Lisbon comes from the Phoenicians and they used to call Lisbon Alis Ubbo, safe harbor.
David 09:57
[melancholic music] The story about the Port of Lisbon is really meaningful, you know, as a safe harbor in one way and now the city is a safe harbor in another. You know, one of my feelings, and in fact a lot of research we did when I was in office, about cities being able to succeed in the innovation economy and elsewhere is also about the quality of life. The diversity is very important. The welcoming nature of being a safe harbor, but also people have to want to live in a place. And Lisbon has such an amazing history and strikes me as having incredible livability at the moment. You know, it’s a beautiful city. It’s lovely to walk around. Can you speak to the quality of life in Lisbon? For example, transportation, how easy is it to get around in the city?
Carlos Moedas 10:49
So, on public transportation, I did—One of my pledges when I was running for mayor was that I promised that I wanted public transportation to be for free for young people and elderly people. [music ends]
So everyone below 23 and everyone 65 plus would be traveling for free. And a lot of people came against me saying that it [doesn’t 11:13] work and that would not change anything. And basically today we have double the demand. We have, basically, almost 20% of the population that travels for free, and there was a big change in the city in terms of people taking the bus. I will advise, I know it is expensive, but, of course, for a city of the size of Lisbon it is possible to have public transportation for free. And today it is probably one of the things that I’m most proud of. It is to be able to give public transportation for free, to be able—that everybody that has the title of public transportation that the young and the elderly don’t pay. They can have bicycles for free. So have a system of bicycles and bike lanes, of course, where people, they actually travel for free.
We are in a world that a lot of mayors try to do things on the sustainability of the area by asking sacrifices from people. I think that you have to ask sometimes for people to help you and to do things that, for them, are tough, but before doing that you have to give them something. And when I was very young I was able to get in the Erasmus program. The Erasmus program was a European program that you would go to a university in another country for free and they will give you some money. And so for me, it was like Europe in my pocket. I got some money from Europe to go somewhere else, and I never forget that. Erasmus became the biggest success program of Europe. So I always had this idea that sustainability has to give something to people. Housing is the biggest problem in every European city. You have to do a lot of public municipal housing. Today we have 12% of the population of Lisbon that live in public owned housing. So Lisbon has 22,000 apartments that we rent, and we do it for people that are very poor; so those people that don’t pay any rent, basically. But also I’m doing it now, and I’ve done it this morning to 60 new apartments, for people that are young professionals that cannot pay rent anymore in the city; professors, policemen, firefighters, doctors, nurses. And so we have—now, we’ve—basically in these three years, we have done around 2,500 new apartments, and of those half have been for people that are young professionals. Because cities are becoming so expensive. Lisbon, in the last 10 years, the rents went up by 60% and income went up by 20%, so people cannot afford rent anymore.
And, you know, you have to license more housing, but you also have to give the example as the municipality and you have to build more. But building sometimes takes a long time, so what we do also is to support people paying rent. So we have a lot of people, we do a threshold which is one third of your income. One third of your income should be the maximum that you pay for rent, so if you pay more than one third of your income we pay the difference. So we have a couple thousand people that we also help paying rent. But, you know, I don’t have a solution. I think there’s no magic bullet, but there’s a lot of things that one has to do. A lot of projects that we’re doing also like giving plots of land to cooperatives, people that get together in neighborhood and they build but they get the land for free, so it’s cheaper.
David 15:04
It’s the principle of publicly owned housing being available for young professionals, at least in North America. In some other parts of the world it would be considered to be a new idea, because public housing here is seen as for lower income people. I mean, the most interesting model on that, and I’m sure you’re aware of it, is Singapore. Where a huge percentage of people live in publicly owned housing from all walks of life and it sort of takes the market out of it a little bit.
Can you speak a little bit about the vulnerabilities of Lisbon to changing climactic patterns, for example, heavy and unpredictable levels of rainfall? I know you’re working on a Lisbon drainage master plan. We had something called the Wet Weather Flow Master Plan in Toronto. Can you speak about what you’re doing in Lisbon and why it is necessary to undertake this work?
Carlos Moedas 16:01
[rousing music] There’s always a storyline for the things I’ve been doing. So when I was at the European Commission, we developed with an economist, very well-known, called Mariana Mazzucato. We developed this idea of the European missions. And one of those missions—The missions came a little bit by this idea of the moonshot of Kennedy and putting a man on the moon, right? And so one of the ideas was to have a number of cities in Europe that would be carbon neutral by 2030. And so we created that mission, and then when I was elected mayor I applied for the city of Lisbon to be part of that mission of being carbon neutral by 2030, which is 20 years before the European target of 2050. [music ends]
The idea was that Europe was doing a lot in terms of mitigation, like the public transportation that’s for free—I mean, it’s like a mitigation kind of measure—but we were not doing enough in terms of adaptation. And Lisbon was the perfect example to apply to that project because we have a huge risk of flooding. So the city was built by the Romans, and it was built in water, so we are actually above seven rivers that are below the city. So we had, really, a risk of flood that was visible, because people were getting floods every two years or every three years, and so what we decided was to build these two tunnels that would get the water from the top of the hill to the river, 40 meters, 70 meters below ground. This is two tunnels, just to give you an idea, of—What? 5.5 meters of diameter. So for our American friends, like a two storey building in terms of diameter of the whole tunnel. And the water will get into the tunnel then we will have a reservoir that is almost 20,000 cubic meters where you can get all that water. Clean it a little bit and use that water that is not drinkable to water the gardens, to clean the streets, basically saving millions of gallons of water that we can use for the city. Because we were using drinkable water to clean the streets, which is crazy. I mean, you don’t need to clean the streets with drinkable water. And so now the tunnel is almost done. We’re basically now at four kilometers. We’ll get to five kilometers in the summer. We can have three water systems, one for drinkable water, another one for the waste water, and the third one, that we called water plus, for this water that is not totally clean but can be used all over the city for so much and so many things that one can do with it. And at the same time we avoid flooding. And so we were selected as one of these 100 cities that will be carbon neutral by 2030. As a European mayor, let me thank the European Union because a country like Portugal would never be able to do what we do in terms of environment and sustainability without European money.
David 19:20
That sounds like an amazing project. It isn’t the reason you created it, but must have had some positive impacts economically with jobs as well, going forward I’m sure too.
Carlos Moedas 19:31
There was a lot of job creation, but more than that I think that the city will be transformed by the way that some parts of the city every winter were suffering for so many years with the shops and the coffees and people getting—water getting into their homes. So, all that will not happen. And I think it is a fantastic example of concrete work that people see. That’s why the populism and the extremism in politics is so—I mean, it’s so in vogue. It’s so—I mean, you see a lot of populists because the moderates and the centrists are not doing the job that they should, which is like to look at policies that basically have visuals. That people see, that people can feel. All that is extremely important and so I’ve tried in these three years to really do things that are visible in a good way. I mean, it is not about communication. It is about things that people can see and they can leave and they can feel. And that’s something that the European Union has to work on a lot because sometimes the European Union is not very good at it. I think that mayors can be the ambassadors and you can tell the populists, “Look, being a populist is easy. It’s just saying that everything is wrong and that you could change the world.” I am doing it. We are doing it, and we did this and we did that. When you have that, then the population understands and basically they don’t go for the populists.
David 21:01
I couldn’t agree more, mayor. And one of the gifts of being a mayor is you are able to not just make policies, but make real change and meet people’s expectations. So, one final question for you. We’re living in very turbulent times at the moment. In that context and in the context of the work you’re doing in Lisbon, if you could make a—wave a magic wand and make one change anywhere, beyond Lisbon, globally, anywhere, that would improve the lives of people and in particular the residents of Lisbon or anywhere, what would it be?
Carlos Moedas 21:37
I think that—I really wish that people could understand that politicians don’t have a magic spell. We are human beings, we do our best, and that serious politicians do things and that populists are killing democracy. And if I had a wish it would be, basically, that people would understand that there are no solutions in the extremism of the right and the left. There are no solutions. And I think that if [there’s 22:11] some way or some magic way people could understand that, I think that the world will come back to something that today is very difficult, it is to be rational. The digital world brought us a lot of good things and a lot of cure for diseases and a lot of great things in technology, but it’s killing democracy. Because people just go through emotions and they think that politicians are magicians that can solve everything. We cannot. The world is complex. The world is not simple. Solutions are not simple. You know, if one could have that, and I will do everything I can in my power to do that, and I know, David, that you have done that, I think that if we can push that message, that would be the most important thing today. Because if not, we’re going to be in the hands of populists.
And, you know, when you see what’s happening to a country that I love so much, which is the United States of America and I had part of my life there, and when you see what’s happening, I think that is just beyond scary, to be frank. [fast rhythmic music] It’s beyond scary because Americans don’t deserve these and we don’t deserve what’s happening. I mean, that makes me really, really sad. And it is not about political parties. I’m not about political parties. It’s about getting the message that moderation is the only way forward. You can be moderate and have different ideas, but craziness and populism, no.
David 23:45
Mayor, incredibly well put. And I think the real actions you’re taking in Lisbon that people can see and that are making a positive difference, as you said, those are the best bulwark against that populace tide. So, thank you so much for being with us today on Cities 1.5, but more importantly, thank you for your ongoing work and leadership.
Carlos Moedas 24:06
Thank you very much. [music ends]
David 24:08
[fast rhythmic music] This episode of Cities 1.5 is produced by University of Toronto Press, with generous support from C40 Cities. Want more access to current research on how city leaders are approaching climate action? We also publish the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy. Our mission is to publish timely evidence-based research that contributes to the urban climate agenda and supports governmental policy towards an equitable and resilient world. The journal serves as a platform for dynamic content that highlights ambitious near-term climate action, with a particular focus on human-centered solutions to today’s most pressing climate challenges. To read the latest issue, visit jccpe.utpjournals.press or click on our link in the show notes. [music ends]
Kathy Baughman 25:07
[phone rings] [whooshing] I am Kathy Baughman McLeod and I am the CEO of Climate Resilience for All, and I am calling in from Arlington, Virginia. [handset clicks]
David 25:20
Kathy, thanks so much for joining us on Cities 1.5.
Kathy Baughman 25:24
Thank you for inviting me. Delighted.
David 25:26
Can you just introduce yourself to them and tell us a bit about you and about Climate Resilience for All?
Kathy Baughman 25:35
Yes, I’d love to. So I founded the organization Climate Resilience for All about—almost a year and a half ago, and I, prior to this, worked at a non-profit funded by the Rockefeller Foundation where we focused on resilience building to extreme heat. And so I spent five years, really, understanding extreme heat, and it’s this curious thing about; it is it’s silent and invisible. I was in the government in Florida and worked for the chief financial officer of the state of Florida and looked at risk from climate to a very climate-exposed state. And I started in conservation with the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land. Lots of experiences that come together around policy and money, finance and climate and nature, and how humans are being affected. And what we came to, in the last five years we conducted an analysis with a group then called Vivid Economics, now called [Mood 26:44] Economics, how profoundly and disproportionately impacted women are by extreme heat, physiologically and economically and what that meant for communities and society. And it was so profound that several colleagues and myself formed Climate Resilience for All, and our tagline is, ‘When women are climate resilient, we will all be climate resilient’. And so that’s me in a nutshell.
David 27:11
It’s a fascinating mission and very interesting to hear about your background, particularly advising Florida about climate risk, which is a whole separate political conversation. But, you know, we’re talking about Climate Resilience for All and its focus on women and protecting them from extreme heat. Now, that’s news to me, actually. The impact on women physiologically. I could see it economically, particularly in certain countries. Can you talk a bit more about the urban side of this? Women living in cities, what’s the risk of extreme heat?
Kathy Baughman 27:51
So, just quickly on the physiological impact. When you have hormonal fluctuations, that means you have body temperature regulation fluctuations and it means that our heart rates are different and respond to heat differently. It also means that during pregnancy there’s intense vulnerability for some of those same reasons. And then now to the city’s aspect, the way that cities are built, as we all—and I’m sure your listeners are well aware of the urban heat island effect and the fact that climate is driving in-migration, migration into cities, as farms are harder and harder to make a living and subsist on people come to the cities for economic opportunities. And so more population density, more informal settlements, metal roofs that hold heat and emanate them at night, building materials, black asphalt that, again, holds it and releases it. All of those things mean that cities plus, you know, the built environment, the physiological disproportionate impact.
And then socioeconomic, you know, women paid less than men, women with care responsibilities that they don’t get paid for, women having to take care of kids while men can work in shifts that are pushed to later hours in the night because it’s cooler, women are missing those shifts. The stuff that women are selling in the streets in the cities, they’re melting, cracking and going bad before they can sell it. They themselves have all sorts of impacts. Our partners in South Asia are having rashes, headaches, blisters, urinary tract infections. They don’t want to drink a lot of water because that means they have to use the bathroom. There’s not a safe, dignified place to go to the bathroom, so they withhold. But when you don’t have enough water and it’s hot, you have more health problems. And then ultimately people are losing their pregnancies or miscarrying because they’re working in the heat, and of course they’re dying. And so it is urgent, urgent, urgent, and the silent and invisible threat is a triple punch in the face to women and vulnerable communities and city leaders and policy makers need that information to understand, “What is the priority?” Where are those communities and what do we need to do to provide access to protections and the information that people need to protect themselves and their income, which is so important for women?
David 30:12
[slow rhythmic music] The narrative you’re giving is so powerful. Where is Climate Resilience for All working? In what countries or cities or geographies?
Kathy Baughman 30:23
So we’re working in six states in India, we are also in Pakistan, we are in Sierra Leone, soon to be Liberia and in Ghana, in Bangkok, and a little bit in some of the rural north areas of Thailand.
David 30:38
A real challenge because the economic issues, the way women earn income, at least lower income women in those cities, the way their partners earn income combines with the heat challenge and the way they live. Is there a commonality between the—between Africa and Asia on those issues?
Kathy Baughman 31:03
Very much so. And when you interview and have the focus groups that we have, which is at the start of every engagement that we have, it is you start with questions to understand what the experience is, the issues are the same; the rash, the headache. One of the biggest issues is nighttime temperatures, because I think this is the biggest opportunity for urban policymakers. To understand nighttime temperatures and what they mean, and ultimately what they mean for economic productivity of a city. But I want to go back to your question about the commonality in developed cities. This is also a problem. And in some ways—I mean, Europe is heating at twice the rate of the rest of the world, and there are other places where it’s just—it’s hotter and people are not fully aware. Like, a woman is twice as likely to die from heat in Europe than a man, and 52,000 people died in Europe two summers ago from extreme heat. And mostly that’s in cities. We don’t have a full grasp because we don’t collect causes of death by heat, you know, easily naturally, so it’s another policy opportunity for policymakers. But I want to talk about the Global North and the Global South and this commonality of the women we’re talking about. There are 800 million informal women workers in the world in this band across the equator, and, you know, it goes down into Australia. And that, for us, when you think about targeting the most vulnerable and the most at risk, and from a justice perspective the people who contributed the least to climate change are suffering the worst. And we know that but to get your brain around how big this is, if we add low income places like Lake Charles, Louisiana or places in, you know, middle income countries or in Europe, it’s probably more like a billion women facing extreme heat, and East LA is a great example.
David 32:58
It’s fascinating to me that the problem is not a Global South problem, it’s a global problem.
Kathy Baughman 33:05
It is a global problem. Lots of immigrants from Central America come to LA and they are street vendors, and street vendors as—and many of them—most of them are women are exposed to the heat of California and the heat of the city of LA and all of its concrete and everything else. And so it is the same issue as someone in the market in Ahmedabad or in Freetown. They’re standing in the sun making a living, selling—it could be fruit, it could be cold water, it could be jewelry, whatever it is they’re selling—and their bodies are being roasted by the temperature coming up off of the asphalt and the things that they’re selling are going bad. And so, just the same issues in LA as we have in countries where you think of, you know, people living in poverty. And as a Canadian, you’ll remember that in British Columbia 900 people died in two days from a heat wave. That was the first where we start talking about heat domes and what—you know, what the hell is a heat dome? And a heat dome hits British Columbia where people are not ready and the homes don’t—aren’t built for heat and people are wearing clothes, you know, not for the heat and, you know, 800 people are dead. And it’s—you know, it’s a mass casualty event, and that is British Columbia.
David 34:21
I’m in British Columbia right now, so I—very attuned to that and other climate disasters that are happening here. It’s very serious.
Kathy Baughman 34:32
I just want to put a few numbers on the worker productivity losses. So 8% of Bangkok’s GDP is decreased by extreme heat because of the motorbike industry. So, everybody’s on a motorbike, the heat’s coming up off of the black asphalt, they’re wearing heavy clothes in case they crash and they don’t want to have their skin, you know, torn off. And so heavy clothes, heat, humidity, asphalt, 8% of their GDP is lost. Evaporated because of the heat. Any worker in New Delhi loses a quarter of their income when they work outside. In the US, in 2020, which is the baseline, $100 billion in worker productivity loss is due to extreme heat, with 18% of that loss being borne disproportionately by Black and Hispanic workers in the South. So just to give the magnitude, and we’re just getting our arms around how big this is. And so if you are leading a city or planning for a city, or even you’re, you know, the budget director or finance minister or whatever for a city, this issue matters a lot. And the good thing is that there are solutions.
David 35:37
[fast rhythmic music] Can you just speak to the numbers? You know, the 8% loss in GDP in Bangkok, for example, is that because the workers literally can’t keep working because of the heat or how are those numbers derived? They’re very powerful and they’re huge.
Kathy Baughman 35:53
Yeah. So, this is with the firm mood economics and the methodology is about labor hours and the number of hours that people are able to work when it’s hot, and then also looking at GDP numbers during the hottest season. And part of that is also understanding health effects. And this is—So, this is a burgeoning area of, you know, health and climate coming together, and then how does the effects of heat on your health impact your income or the productivity you’re bringing to the company you work for? [music ends]
If you think about a night that you don’t sleep, and imagine these places—And this is why the Global North has to be paying attention, is that Global North is not accustomed to the heat. You know, a lot of our partners in the Global South will say, “You know, it’s just hot,” and we’ll say, “No, no, it’s more than just hot.” I mean the brain—the human brain is sort of feeble. We don’t really understand that acceleration. It is so gobsmacking of how quickly it’s coming on and we’re just saying, “It’s just hot and I don’t feel good.” And like, no, no, no, this is hitting your economy and your body. And so, people in the Global North, they are not accustomed to this at all, and so more people die on a hot day after a cold day because it’s just a—it’s a shock and you’re not ready and if you’re already susceptible with underlying health conditions. So that first wave of heat wave in a heat season kills people more than any other, and then, you know, the numbers go down. But if you have a really hot day after a hot or a warm day, fewer people die. And so this matters if you are a city leader and you’re trying to figure out, “What’s the early warning system I’m using? What’s the size of the resource I’m going to put out in terms of, you know, a community door-to-door system to check on seniors? You know, what’s the system we’re going to use when you are not cooled at night?” And lots of seniors will say, “I can’t afford to run the air,” even if they have it. And it’s like a slow—It comes on and so many seniors, when you hear about these deaths, it’s happening because they didn’t put the air on. And then lots of places where there isn’t air because they’re not accustomed to it. And if you are an employer and your employees are not cooled at night—Now I’m going to jump to the Global South. If your employees are living in informal settlements with metal roofs, it can be eight degrees C hotter inside because of that metal roof and the heat that it’s holding. And so if you don’t sleep, you don’t clean your brain, your body doesn’t rest, you show up at work and you don’t have the hand-eye coordination that you had, your brain is really slow, it has huge ramifications. And yet no city policies—I will say that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava in Miami-Dade County has a policy that every public housing dwelling will have air conditioning, and we could have another podcast about air conditioning and its contributions to, you know, emissions and global warming. But from a humanitarian perspective, that’s one place I know where there is a policy that there will be an air conditioner so that people’s lives are protected. But you see on the nighttime—and we’ll be putting out a paper about this—we are looking at global average daily temperatures of plus 1.5°. And knowing that the Paris goal was 1.5° plus the pre-industrial temperatures as our, goal at night in certain cities the plus is like 6 and 7C, and we’re paying attention to the daytime and not to the night. And if people are not cooled, we’re losing people, people are getting sick and they’re not able to come to work and produce, and which is, you know, our single measure of our growth and our success, which is to be questioned, is our economic output.
And so, now to the solutions. So, we have tested and now are scaling a combination of a social supportive cash and an insurance, that is a parametric insurance, that is pegged to the temperature. And we have determined—And let me just say, this is in India and we are scaling this to Thailand and in Sierra Leone and in other places in West Africa. But the idea is that the women we’re working with are in the informal sector. Our partner is a labor union. The labor union identified the eight most heat exposed trades: market vendors, headloaders who are women who are carrying goods on their head in markets from—you know, from a wholesaler to a retailer, ship breakers who are breaking up ships that are out of commission for recycling, waste recyclers, construction workers, home-based workers. You see the trend. And in these trades, women are working and exposed to the heat all day long and oftentimes they’re the main breadwinner. And their average daily income is $3 a day and their income is being hit by extreme heat for a very intense, like 50 days, let’s say, of April, May—And it gets to starting a little bit earlier every year. So it’s already 42°. It’s been recorded I think at 42°—41° in Gujarat this year, like just a few days ago. So you’re replacing $3 a day of income, or at least we’re supplementing income. When the temperature reaches the threshold where we have, working with medical doctors and with the partner, determine that that’s the place where they should not be out working, we replace the income for that day with this insurance. And every day that the recorded temperature is X, they get paid to their own bank accounts. So they have to have a bank account to participate. So you have this financial inclusion of people coming into the formal banking, you have a replacement of income, and then at a lower temperature we put a social protection knowing that people are already being impacted, their health is impacted. Let’s say like 40°, that’s really, really hot. For the Fahrenheit speakers, that is like 104°. And so last year we tested this with 50,000 women, and 50,000 women in three states and 23 districts in all these trades received two days of cash to support the losses from the heat. And 92% of those women received insurance payout of somewhere between like $7 and 60 cents and $19 and 90 cents, depending on, you know, your weather basin and how many days where the threshold was reached. And so the reports of what this money did was—surprised us. Because, yes, we knew that people would pay for food and people would be able to pay their bills and pay off some of their debt, because debt is a big issue, but we had women say, “It restored my dignity. It restored my credit worthiness. They allowed my kids to go to school because they knew I was credit worthy.” But I think if you’re an urban planner or a city leader you’re thinking, “Okay, how can this apply to my setting?”
David 42:33
[slow rhythmic music] Fascinating and extremely powerful, including the stories which go way beyond the climate and safety issues. Just a couple of technical things arising out of that. Can you explain what parametric insurance is and what kind of temperatures are we looking at where it becomes unsafe?
Kathy Baughman 42:56
Parametric insurance? If you had a fire in your kitchen, an adjuster would come and look at your kitchen and tell you, “We think this is a, you know, $120,000 worth of damage.” And so, I’m going to submit that and here’s my defense of that number, and then the insurance company would send you—ideally if it goes well, they’re going to send you a check and you’re going to—you know, you’re going to fix your kitchen. A parametric is something that pays out when an event happens, not the damage. So, the event in this case is a temperature threshold that you pre-set. We did this when I was at the Nature Conservancy. We put the first insurance policy on a coral reef based on it protecting the shoreline and the economy on the shore. And so with—in this case, how hot does it get? And it’s temperature. In the reef case, it’s the wave height. You could use barometric pressure as another indicator, or wind speed. So you see the, you know, ‘para’ meaning by and ‘metric’ meaning measure, it’s when this thing happens. And the thing is, it pays really quickly. This is why people are coming to parametrics because they’re really flexible. You can have multiple hazards. You’d say like, “I want the barometric pressure to be this, and that pays, and the wind speed to be X, and then when that happens, we do this. You know, we get paid.” [music fades out]
You asked about the threshold. You know, we set it at about 40° for the cash support, and then depending on the weather basin, are you coastal? Are you in the desert? Are you in the city? Where is that threshold? And there’s a range between—somewhere between like 42° and 43.5°. Somewhere in there, you know, plus or minus.
David 44:34
Do the workers involved pay into the insurance or is it provided by their employer? How does that work?
Kathy Baughman 44:39
Well, they are self-employed, so they pay a third of the premium. CRA in partnership with our partners, we raise the philanthropy for the rest. So if you think about the capital stack of adaptation, you know, this is like the household and small business spend of, they put in 30%, we raised 70%, and then there’s that risk capital in there. Swiss Re is the reinsurer company, a company in India called ICICI Lombard is the local insurer, and then also it’s just about to kick off for this heat season which just started.
David 45:14
It sounds so far, like, this experiment’s been successful. It’s met the needs of these women. It’s created some incredible stories about what it’s meant for them in other aspects of their life. Is it replicable? And if so, is it replicable in Global North situations too?
Kathy Baughman 45:33
Yes. Because if you are an employer of people who are not cooled at night, and if you don’t know if your employees are cooled at night, it almost doesn’t matter. You could be in British Columbia, you could be in, you know, West Texas, you don’t know that they’re coming to work really tired. You could provide—And whether this is a—you know, a micro insurance or is this an air conditioning stipend, is the—Like, what is the financial mechanism? So, you could have a policy—You know, I would call it like a mezzanine level policy. Like a corporate policy. That is when these temperatures come, this thing kicks in and supports the utility bills of our employees. It makes sure that the air conditioning is covered, and there are different ways that you could do that. It’s also good for trades. It’s good for people who have people working outside, like telecom companies who you’ve got workers on poles and taking care of wires, construction, police force. So, it has applicability. And, you know, you think about the relationship between, is it the human body? You know, you want the person to be able to keep doing what they’re doing. If you protect health and you protect income, then you protect your own bottom line. If you had an insurance for something you knew was going to happen, then it’s not really insurance. You need a different mechanism. Which is why we don’t want to just, you know, insure, you need to reduce the risk. And so part of the program are physical things that help you, an umbrella in the market, a tarp to cover your crops from roasting over, [your roof 47:02] from flood, lights to work at night. As for farmers, women farmers needed to be with their kids, but when they had solar lights they could farm at night in their small holding and it kept them from being bitten from scorpions and snakes because they could see them. So, really useful, practical stuff. And it’s so interesting in this business. Everyone’s, “You know, it’s got to be catalytic and innovative,” and sometimes, you know, it’s a light so you don’t get bitten by a scorpion. Yeah.
David 47:31
The whole program’s fascinating to me because, I think, sometimes, you know, when you’re a leader of a Global North city or working for a Global North not-for-profit, we tend to think, “Oh, we’ve got the solutions for the Global South.” In a way you’ve helped develop a Global South solution that now might be applicable to the Global North.
Kathy Baughman 47:52
Yeah.
David 47:53
And there is so much learning to come that way. I think this is a fascinating example.
Kathy Baughman 47:59
There’s an organization in India, it’s called the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, and it’s a multilateral. There are, I think, now 40 members of countries, Global North and Global South, focused on how to build and understand resilient infrastructure. And we, in a community of practice around heat, recently released recommendations to city leaders on transit systems and heat, and how to think about the rider and the experience getting to and from the transit, but also the transit itself and its engineering and operations. And so these types of guides are going to be essential for city leaders and thinking about how they’re investing in city infrastructure, you know, profoundly impacted by heat, and then the people impacted by heat using that infrastructure.
David 48:46
I think, Kathy, that kind of guide is going to be instrumental. You know, one of the challenges in heat at the moment is that public health doesn’t actually know how to properly record deaths from heat, because people get recorded for whatever symptoms they show, and so globally we’re vastly underestimating the challenge. And as the facts become clear, guides like that are going to become more and more important to allow cities to take the right actions.
Kathy Baughman 49:18
And I think if you were looking for easy wins as a city policymaker, asking the public hospitals to have a checkbox if they don’t. “Could this injury—could this death be heat-related?” Just ask the question at the intake, and that would help a lot. Because we have mortality data, not extensively in everywhere, but we really don’t have morbidity data, and that would be very helpful interventions for city leaders.
David 49:45
That’s a great point. In fact, even just recording the temperature, you know.
Kathy Baughman 49:49
Yes. [chuckles]
David 49:50
Can you talk a bit about where Climate Resilience for All is going over the next year or two? Do you have a sense of next steps?
Kathy Baughman 50:00
Yeah. And also just in terms of the comprehensive, the insurance is like the jazz hands, you know, that everyone wants to hear about, and it is—You know, I’d say [chuckles], “The jazz hands [are 50:11] the cornerstone of the program. But in low income communities you have to have this risk transfer and you need the risk reduction, which is, you know, things that—like I was talking about the umbrellas or water coolers or things like that that reduce the risk. And then we also need for heat literacy to elevate. You know, we have to raise heat literacy and insurance and finance literacy. You know, what are you buying? If you are an employee and your employer offers this, what is it? What’s the difference between insurance and a cash stipend? And on the early warnings, we also learned that there’s not an established early warning system for heat designed for, with and by women. So women take information differently, share information differently. Fewer women have access to phones and smartphones, so there’s a bunch of elements to that part. Another piece of this is that the media is not sufficiently prepared, and we train journalists on how to write about extreme heat and health and gender. You know, when you’re asking about the work of CRA, we’re training journalists. We are working on early warning systems for women and communities in addition to these financial solutions, and trying to quickly figure out how they fit into an existing context. So, you want to go where things are already moving, like in Sierra Leone in the markets, or to the women in East LA who are organized around an organization called Inclusive Action, so you find that partner.
And so where are we going? You know, we’re following the map of the 800 million, and I would say a billion because we’re also working in the Global North, but our focus is determining these best evidence-based interventions. And then we need a policy uptake. I mean, this is why I’m so delighted to be on the podcast today because, you know, we’re a small NGO, we’re hustling to bring science and interventions and financial solutions and lots of expertise and such, but it needs—these things need to be policy. The beauty of addressing extreme heat is nobody has to die from this. I mean, if we all understand it and know what to do when it comes and we know it is coming and have the capacity to do it, no one has to die. Which, you know, if you’re a city leader or mayor or anybody, that’s a good agenda. [chuckles] You know, protect your citizens.
David 52:23
I’ve just got one last question, which we’re asking all of our guests this season. In the context of the conversation we’ve just had, if you could make one global system’s change to better support your work, what would it be?
Kathy Baughman 52:38
That’s big.
David 52:40
Well, we’re not here to ask simple questions.
Kathy Baughman 52:43
Every public spend decision needs to have a heat screen on it, and women need to be a part of those decisions. Make women half of every decision making body in every jurisdiction. That is the change that we need. That might be the whole—the big banana right there.
David 53:05
That might be the big banana for a lot of challenges.
Kathy Baughman 53:08
Yes! Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Start with that. But that might address what’s happening in Gaza and Ukraine. [chuckles]
[whimsical music] Women, while we learned that they are disproportionately impacted, they’re also disproportionately equipped to solve it. And so, there’s a duality of women as vulnerable and also women as incredibly powerful, because they are the backbone of the communities. And we have so much data that tells us that when women are on boards of companies, the companies do better. When women are leaders of nations, they have better outcomes; fewer deaths from COVID and more environmental and climate legislation and more collaboration on early childhood education. So we know that women are great leaders and perform and we know that they’re disproportionately impacted, and what we’re trying to do is empower women to solve this with creative solutions.
David 53:57
Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today, but more importantly for your ongoing work and for the work of Climate Resilience for All, which is, I think, promoting a unique way to think about the really serious impacts of heat. Bravo and thank you so much. [music continues then ends]
[rousing music] If cities are to survive, thrive and innovate into the future, they need to be resilient. In the age of the climate crisis, this is a tall order. Cities all over the world need to be equipped to deal with all manner of impacts, from extreme heat to unprecedented flooding events. Curbing emissions is not enough. Cities, mayors, the climate movement and civil society must all work together to create resilience building projects such as those we heard about in this episode if the cities of today are to be around tomorrow. [music ends]
[Cities 1.5 theme music] On next week’s episode, we’ll be having a standalone interview with a returning guest, the Ecological economist, author and playwright Tim Jackson. His new book, The Care Economy, explores how care, whether that be of ourselves, each other, or the planet, got decoupled from economics. He’ll be taking us through why that is a problem and what we can all do to change this disastrous status quo. Make sure you tune in. You won’t want to miss it.
This has been Cities 1.5, leading global change through local climate action. I’m David Miller. I was the mayor of Toronto, Canada, and I know firsthand the role cities can play in solving the climate crisis. Currently, I’m the editor-in-chief of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, published by the University of Toronto Press in collaboration with the C40 Center for City Climate Policy and Economy, where I’m also the managing director. C40’s mission is to help its member cities halve their emissions within a decade while improving equity, building resilience, and creating the conditions for everyone everywhere to thrive.
Cities 1.5 is produced by University of Toronto Press in association with the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy and C40 Cities. This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt and edited by Morgane Chambrin. Our executive producers are Peggy Whitfield and Calli Elipoulos. Our music is by Lorna Gilfedder. The fight for an empowered world is closer than you think. To learn more, visit the show’s website linked in the episode notes. See you next time. [Cities 1.5 theme music continues then ends]
