Urban rethink: Tackling climate change in cities
Insights from the December 2022 Deloitte-ThoughtLab Global City Survey
Cities around the world are currently engaged in a multipronged battle. COVID-19 stands out as one of the biggest public health challenges faced by cities and nations in the past century. However, even as the pandemic recedes, its lingering effects and the associated economic disruption will likely continue to impact cities for a considerable time. Amid all this, cities are now shifting their focus to another major challenge—climate change and environmental sustainability.
Deloitte collaborated with ThoughtLab to survey 200 city leaders and 2,000 citizens globally to better understand the steps cities are taking to become future-ready. The survey shows that both city leaders and citizens surveyed agree that climate change and pollution are one the biggest challenges faced by cities globally (figure 1).
This article dives deeper into ways cities are targeting emission reduction, building resilience toward climate change, developing governance structures, and working to achieve equitable climate actions.
The survey suggests that cities are addressing climate change and sustainability challenges in different ways. There is a greater focus on meeting net-zero and climate-neutral targets across cities and an intention to transition toward clean and renewable energy sources by the year 2050. City leaders also acknowledge the growing distress due to climate change and extreme weather events, such as pollution, flooding, and water scarcity, and want to build resiliency in their cities’ infrastructure and response to such events. Also, rising temperatures and the creation of urban-heat islands were cited as growing environmental challenges by many, if not all, city leaders and citizens (figure 2).
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Mahesh Kelkar
Ines dos Santos Costa
Anna Kowalewska
The authors would like to thank Weronika Myck and Kamil Dziegielewski for their thoughtful feedback on the draft. The authors would also like to thank Glynis Rodrigues from the Center for Government Insights for her contributions to the research and publication processes.
Cover image by: Sonya Vasilieff