Today, several of the world’s leading climate change scientists came together with city and business leaders, global NGOs and national governments to announce a new initiative, the Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP) that will present the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments in accessible and targeted summaries that can help inform action at the city scale.
climate change
Innovate4Cities: Session round-up
The Resilience Shift and our strategic partners, Resilience First and the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI), were excited to present a number of sessions at the conference, covering a range of topics relevant to resilience in urban infrastructure. Recordings of each session are available to stream now.
#BuildingToCOP26 Coalition accelerates climate action
The Resilience Shift is part of the Building to COP26 Coalition which has released this week its plans for #BuildingToCOP26 – ahead of Cities, Regions and Built Environment Day at COP26.
Seizing South Africa’s Urban Opportunity
Savina Carluccio, Head of Guidance, Tools and Standards at The Resilience Shift, moderated a discussion on urban opportunities for South Africa as part of Africa Cities and Built Environment Day.
ICSI at London Climate Action Week
We were thrilled to be involved in a number of events this week for London Climate Action Week, providing expert insight on panel discussions, and showcasing one of our own initiatives.
‘Lessons learned’ and the changing face of engineering
Professor Paul Jowitt shares his reflections on what makes an engineer today, why ‘lessons learned’ about failure don’t seem to be, and how systems thinking is fundamental to resilience.
Can we deliver net carbon zero? Roundtable debate
As part of the ‘Triennial’ event ‘Planning for Climate Change and the Enhanced Resilience of Civil Infrastructure’ a collaboration by civil engineering organisations ICE, ASCE and CSCE, our own Seth Schultz will be taking part in a debate on delivering net carbon zero, and the role of the engineering community on Tuesday 25th May.
Decarbonising bridges: a view from Sweden
Seizing opportunities to reduce carbon emissions through material choices and approaches that support environmental sustainability. Bridge engineers Daniel Ekström and Johan Lindersson discuss opportunities to reduce carbon emissions associated with bridges.
What can we learn from the WFEO climate stories?
The WFEO Climate Stories series is a collection of blogs written by WFEO committee members about climate change in six countries from around the world: Australian, Canada, China, France, Kenya and the UK. The blogs looked at how climate change is affecting each country, attitudes to climate change, what is being done to reduce carbon emissions, and the role engineers can play. Here Davide Stronati assesses what we can learn from the series.
WFEO climate stories: UK
The UK has commitments in place to reduce carbon emissions to 0% by 2050. However to achieve this, carbon reduction needs to be embedded in the planning, design and whole life of assets. Engineers have a key role to play in enabling this to happen by understanding how climate change affects their roles in terms of mitigation and adaptation. WFEO committee member Davide Stronati examines the climate change position in the UK.
WFEO climate stories: Kenya
Kenya has experienced an increase in droughts and floods in the last few years due to the effects of climate change. WFEO Engineering and the Environment committee member Christine Adongo Ogut looks at how climate change is affecting Kenya, and what is being done to reduce carbon emissions in the latest WFEO climate stories blog curated by ICE.
WFEO climate stories: France
In France, 83% of citizens view climate change as a major threat, although an unusually high proportion (20%) think it is already too late to stop the worst effects. In our latest WFEO Climate Stories blog Lylian Coelho Ferreira, WFEO Committee member, looks at how climate change is affecting France, and what the home of the Paris Convention on Climate Change is doing to tackle carbon emissions.
WFEO climate stories: Canada
The second largest country by area, Canada is starting to feel a range of climate change effects. As part of our WFEO Climate Stories series, curated by ICE, Darrel Danyluk and David Lapp look at the situation in Canada and how you tackle climate change in such a large and diverse landmass, and why local responses are key.
WFEO climate stories: China
The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is hosting the World Federation of Engineering Organizations’ (WFEO) Committee on Engineering and the Environment from 2019 to 2023. For this blog series, comissioned by ICE, committee members provide a snapshot of climate change impacts and solutions in their part of the world. To kick off, Professor Jianping Wu of Beijing’s Tsinghua University and his colleagues, Jing He and Xiaodong Guan, survey the scene in China.
Engagement with China critical in tackling climate change
Collaboration with China will be critical in transitioning to a net-zero world by mid-century, according to panellists speaking at the latest instalment of the Brunel International Lecture Series, from East Asia.