Sustainable urbanization: To make cities at forefront of climate solutions

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

Sustainable urbanization provides a path to building resilient cities that can mitigate or adapt to climate change to improve the quality of life of their residents. Through innovative urban planning, investing in green infrastructure, and community engagement, cities can become beacons of hope in the fight against climate change.
Through my role as the President of the New York-based Consortiumfor Sustainable Urbanization, which aims to combat climate change and choose appropriate means and mechanisms to maintain clean air in order to deliver safer and healthier urban areas for the world's population, I worked for decades to championing the sustainable urbanization.

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, with its far-reaching impacts on our planet and its inhabitants, and at the heart of this global crisis lies the undeniable impact of urbanization. With the continuing growth of the world’s population, most people are currently living in cities. This trend towards urbanization has significant implications on climate change, as cities are the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

Cities, however, have the potential to be centers of sustainability and innovation and to provide appropriate solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. By 2050, it is expected that 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, where fast-paced urbanization leads to the expansion of cities at the expense of natural habitats, which leads to deforestation, losing biodiversity, and increasing greenhouse emissions. Constructing and operating buildings, transportation systems, and industrial facilities in cities, moreover, pollute our atmosphere with carbon emissions.

I am saying this because cities are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The increasing temperatures, more frequent, intense heatwaves, increased floods, and other extreme weather phenomena pose great threat to the inhabitants of urban areas, particularly vulnerable communities, which are often concentrated in urban areas. We can see how the low-income neighborhoods lack green spaces or enough infrastructure to deal with the harsh weather phenomena, which makes the population vulnerable to health risks.

To put it in the simplest terms, sustainable urbanization aims to build viable cities economically, socially, and environmentally, by encouraging more intensive and efficient land use, switching to renewable energy sources and investing in public transportation, cycling infrastructure, pedestrian-friendly urban designs, as well as green infrastructure, reducing and recycling waste, and creating building codes that are resilient to climate change.

While we strive to achieve the ambitious net zero emissions goal, it isessential that we remain steadfast in our commitment to driving real change, based on the foundational initiatives of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, strengthened by the momentum generated by the Paris Agreement and the annual meetings of the conference members. We have been given a historic opportunity to create sustainable environments that not only benefit our current generation, but also lay the foundation for a promising future.

I have a solid conviction that monitoring and effective government regulations might be a strong motive for sustainable urbanization and creating the necessary circumstances for local stakeholders to launch innovative, cooperative projects and; thus, play pivotal roles in seeking to achieve sustainability and face the intertwining challenges, namely climate change and rapid urbanization. This means that sustainable urbanization has become inevitable.

Finally, climate change and sustainable urbanization are two intertwining challenges that require taking immediate, coordinated measures. With urbanization continuing to shape the world, cities must be at the forefront of the climate-related solutions rather than sources of environmental deterioration.