New research detailed in The Conversation provides five ways cities can better cope with and become more resilient to climate change through progressive climate adaptation.
The world’s societies, economies and ecosystems are under imminent threat from climate breakdown. But, due to what the United Nations has termed an “adaptation gap,” many countries and cities are perpetually unprepared, reported The Conversation.
“Building climate resilience is notoriously difficult. Economic barriers limit investment in infrastructure and technology. Social inequities undermine the capacity of vulnerable populations to adapt. And inconsistent policies impede coordinated efforts across sectors and at scale,” Paul O’Hare, a lecturer in human geography and urban development at England’s Manchester Metropolitan University, wrote in The Conversation.
O’Hare identified five ways cities can more effectively and progressively adapt and become more resilient to climate change.
The first is to not just “bounce back” following a crisis.
O’Hare said that when natural disasters like storms, floods and wildfires hit, governments often make rebuilding as quickly as possible the priority.
“Though understandable, resilience doesn’t just entail coping with the effects of climate change. Instead of ‘bouncing back’ to a pre-shock status, those in charge of responding need to encourage ‘bouncing forward,’ creating places that are at less risk in the first place,” O’Hare said.
Swales and sustainable urban drainage in Gorton climate-resilient park, Manchester, UK. Paul O’Hare, CC BY-NC-ND
The second resilience and adaptation strategy O’Hare recommended is to be “informed by risk.”
“It can be difficult to predict what the consequences of a crisis might be. Cities are complex, interconnected places. Transboundary risks – the consequences that ripple across a place – must be taken into account,” O’Hare wrote. “The best climate adaptation plans recognise that vulnerability varies across places, contexts and over time. The most effective are holistic: tailored to specific locations and every aspect of society.”
O’Hare said both climatic and non-climatic risk features must be considered in assessments.
“Many existing assessments have limited scope. But others do acknowledge how ageing infrastructures and pressures to develop land to accommodate ever intensifying urban populations exacerbate urban flood risk. Others too, such as the recently published Cambridge climate risk plan, detail how climate risk intersects with the range of services provided by local government,” O’Hare explained.
O’Hare said “systems thinking,” which looks at problems as part of larger, interconnected systems, can be used to identify mutually-dependent drivers of change.
“Good risk assessments will, for example, take note of demographics, age profiles and the socio-economic circumstances of neighbourhoods, enabling targeted support for particularly vulnerable communities. This can help ensure communities and systems adapt to evolving challenges as climate change intensifies, and as society evolves over time,” O’Hare said.
The third strategy is “transformative action.”
“There is no such thing as a natural disaster. The effects of disasters including floods and earthquakes are influenced by pre-existing, often chronic, social and economic conditions such as poverty or poor housing,” O’Hare said.
O’Hare explained that progressive climate resilience looks past immediate shocks to the underlying causes of inequality and vulnerability.
“This ensures that society is not only better prepared to withstand adverse events in the future, but thrives in the face of uncertainty,” O’Hare said.
The fourth recommendation by O’Hare is to use “collective approaches.”
“Effective climate resilience demands collective action. Sometimes referred to as a ‘whole of society’ response, this entails collaboration and shared responsibility to address the multifaceted challenges posed by a changing climate,” O’Hare wrote in The Conversation.
O’Hare said the most successful initiatives consider more broad and longer-term risks while avoiding self-protection of cities, buildings and people.
“For instance, developments not at significant risk should still incorporate adaptation measures including rainwater harvesting or enhanced greening to lower a city’s climate risk profile and benefit local communities, neighbouring authorities and surrounding regions,” O’Hare wrote. “So, progressive resilience is connected, comprehensive and inclusive. Solidarity is key, leveraging resources to address common challenges and fostering a sense of shared purpose and mutual support.”
The last strategy — which O’Hare says is the most effective — is to exploit co-benefits to leverage additional sector and policy benefits that reduce vulnerability to shocks while at the same time addressing other environmental and social challenges.
The United Nations refers to these as “multiple resilience dividends.”
“In northern Europe, for example, moorlands can be restored to retain water helping alleviate downstream flooding, but also to capture carbon and provide vital habitats for biodiversity,” O’Hare wrote. “In south-East Asia solar panels installed on reservoirs generate renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while providing shade to reduce evaporation and conserve water resources during droughts.”
O’Hare pointed out that, while adaptation is critical to tackling climate change worldwide, “the real challenge is to deal with the impacts of climate change while simultaneously creating communities that are fairer, healthier, and better equipped to face any manner of future risks.”
The findings of the study, “Not ‘just’ climate adaptation — towards progressive urban resilience,” were published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
“Climate breakdown poses immense — potentially existential — threats to global economies, societies, and ecosystems. Mitigation must be pursued with vigour. However, given the consensus regarding the inevitability of climate change, and the doom-laden predictions of its impacts, adaptation is urgent,” O’Hare wrote in the study.
The post 5 Ways Cities Can Become More Resilient to Climate Change: Study appeared first on EcoWatch.
https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-resilience-adaptation-cities.html
This week’s quote is from Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the U.S., philanthropist, and environmental advocate: “Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
Earth911 inspirations. Post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day. Click the poster to get a larger image.
This poster was originally published on February 7, 2020.
The post Earth911 Inspiration: Love of Nature Transcends appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/inspire/earth911-inspiration-love-of-nature-transcends-jimmy-carter/
It always strikes us as amusing how many DIY projects you see online that seem to require more time and more money than it would take to simply buy the thing they’re trying to DIY in the first place. Are we missing the point?
We think that doing things ourselves and taking back the power to create instead of simply consuming is absolutely vital to the green movement. But if you don’t already have the materials and spend a lot of money purchasing craft supplies, does it really make sense to DIY?
These eight projects are true do-it-yourself masterpieces. One-of-a-kind outdoor projects you can make for almost nothing, with supplies you most likely already have or can easily pick up second hand for a song. Roll up your sleeves and let’s get started!
1. Teapot/Teacup Bird Feeder
Do you have one of Grandma’s old tea sets lying around that doesn’t quite fit into the sleek modern aesthetic you’ve been cultivating? Put it to great use by feeding the birds in your area — in style.
Thrift stores are always awash in old china, so if you don’t already have the old tea set, consider going wild and spending a few bucks for this DIY delight. You’ll find blogger Dinah Wulf’s instructions for the teacup bird feeder at DIY Inspired.
Safety note: Use sturdy twine or cord — not chain — to hang the feeder. Birds can catch their toes in chain links, which causes serious injury. The National Audubon Society also recommends cleaning seed feeders every two weeks (more often in hot, humid weather) by scrubbing with soap and water and soaking in a 50-50 vinegar-water solution to prevent the spread of avian disease.
2. Gardening Tool Storage
What on earth do you do with those rusty-as-heck, old-school garden rakes hanging around your garage? Well, if you’re any sort of DIY genius, you press them into service as a gardening tool holder.
The original inspiration for this project came from Beth Logan at Artstuff Ltd., whose blog has since gone offline. For a current walkthrough, see the Repurposed Rake Tool Rack tutorial at DIY n Crafts (project #14 in their roundup of 25 ways to reuse old garden tools). The concept is embarrassingly simple — remove the rake handle, mount the head tines-out on a fence or garage wall, and use the tines themselves as hooks for trowels, gloves, and pruners — but eye-catching enough to make you look like a DIY pro.
3. Bottle Tree
Do you like wine? No, I mean do you really like wine? Do you want a reason to drink more of it? And does your garden need a cute border? This sustainable, upcycled garden border may be just the project for you. You might have to expand your drinking list to include bottles of various shapes, sizes, and colors — but variety is the spice of life.
When friends ask how you managed to collect so many bottles, just laugh gaily and then distract them with your dainty teacup bird feeder. The bottle tree tradition itself runs deep — Mississippi garden writer Felder Rushing traces the practice back through African American Southern folk art and, by his own research, as far as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. See his bottle tree gallery and history for inspiration, or jump straight to his how-to guide for building one out of a cedar snag, rebar, or just about anything else.
4. Colorful Outdoor “Tiles”
If your backyard isn’t perfectly landscaped and manicured, with an impeccably tiled “outdoor living space,” don’t despair. You can use up all those half-empty paint cans and create a Pinterest-worthy colorful backdrop for evenings spent clustered around a fire or barbecue.
Pop a few coats of paint on cement tiles and you have a one-of-a-kind flooring solution. If you rent, the same effect could be achieved on a more temporary basis by letting the kids go wild with sidewalk chalk and create a mosaic masterpiece. Check out Elsie’s Painted Patio Tiles at A Beautiful Mess for the back story on this DIY idea. (Heads up: the original author noted she had to touch up the paint each spring in Missouri winters — a porch and patio floor enamel will hold up better than wall paint.)
5. Home Sweet Gnome
Okay, this one might be the least practical idea of the bunch, but that may be why I love it oh so much. If you have a stump in your backyard and you’re not willing or able to pay the truly insane amount it costs to have it ground down and removed, how about making it into a little gnome home? This is the perfect outdoor project if you have small children in your life.
Construct the trappings of a little house — door, windows, winding garden path — from found objects or natural materials, and affix them to the stump. Bonus points if you don’t tell the kids about this particular DIY project and allow them to simply stumble upon it one day in the garden. My mind would have been blown if I had come across one of these as a seven-year-old. For a step-by-step build, see this Gnome Tree Stump Home tutorial on Instructables.
Safety note: Don’t use an angle grinder to gouge windows or doors into a stump. Use a chisel and mallet for shallow detail work, or attach decorative pieces (driftwood, bark, polymer clay) to the outside instead.
6. Mosaic Stepping Stones from Broken China
Every household eventually accumulates a small graveyard of chipped mugs, a single survivor from a four-piece dinner set, or a beloved teapot with a hairline crack. Rather than tossing them — broken ceramics generally aren’t accepted in curbside recycling — embed them in concrete stepping stones for a garden path that’s genuinely one of a kind.
This pairs beautifully with the teacup project above: any teacups that don’t make it past Project #1 (you will break a few) can come back as paving. The DIY mosaic stepping stones tutorial at Gardening.org walks through the full process — breaking ceramics safely inside a drop cloth, sizing pieces to half-inch to one-inch fragments, pressing them into wet concrete, and sealing the surface so sharp edges don’t cause injury underfoot. Basic mold options include an old cake pan, a plastic plant saucer, or a purpose-built stepping stone form from a craft store.
Safety note: Wear safety glasses and heavy gloves when breaking ceramics. Once cured, run a finger over the surface to check for protruding edges and file or sand any down before placing the stone where bare feet might land.
7. Vertical Pallet Herb Garden
Shipping pallets are one of the world’s most abundant near-free materials. Small businesses, garden centers, and feed stores often have stacks of them out back, and asking politely beats the alternative of seeing them landfilled. Mounted vertically against a sunny wall or fence, a pallet becomes a stacked planter that holds enough herbs to keep a kitchen in basil, thyme, parsley, and chives all season.
Grit Magazine published a clear how-to for a vertical pallet planter — line the back and sides with landscape fabric or heavy plastic to hold soil, fill through the slats, and plant each gap as its own row. The gaps act as natural divisions, so different herbs don’t fight for the same root space.
Safety note: Use only heat-treated pallets for anything edible. Look for the IPPC stamp with the letters HT (heat treated) and avoid any stamped MB (methyl bromide — a fumigant restricted under the Montreal Protocol). Unstamped pallets are unknowns; skip them for food crops. The same heat-treated pallets are fine for ornamental flowers either way.
8. Punched Tin Can Lanterns
Steel food cans — soup, tomato, coffee — are one of the most recyclable materials on Earth, but the recycling-then-buying-something-decorative loop has plenty of slack in it. With nothing more than a hammer, a few nails of varying sizes, and the freezer, an empty can becomes an outdoor lantern that throws constellation patterns across a patio at dusk.
HGTV’s tin can lantern tutorial covers the trick that makes this project work: fill the can with water and freeze it solid before punching, so the ice supports the can wall and prevents denting. Sketch your pattern on paper, tape it to the frozen can, punch through with a nail at each marked dot, and let the ice thaw. Drop in a battery tealight (much safer outdoors than a real flame) and group them along a walkway or down the center of an outdoor table.
The Point of All This
None of these projects requires you to buy more than a tube of waterproof adhesive, a bag of concrete, or maybe a stepping stone mold. The materials — chipped china, leftover wine bottles, empty cans, a forgotten pallet, an old rake — are already in your house or someone else’s. That’s the point. The greenest project is the one that uses what already exists, and the best part is that yours will look like nobody else’s.
Editor’s Note: This article, originally authored by Madeleine Somerville on June 17, 2015, was updated with corrected links and new ideas in May 2026.
The post Outdoor Projects You Can DIY for Almost Nothing appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/diy/outdoor-projects-you-can-diy-for-almost-nothing/
More than half the world’s population—4.4 billion people—live in cities today. That number is expected to rise to 80% by 2050. Our guest, Nadina Galle, is a trailblazing ecological engineer and author of The Nature of Our Cities. She is an ecological engineer who studies the intersection of nature and technology in urban environments. Nadina developed the concept of an Internet of Nature (IoN) that uses tools like artificial intelligence, automation, and sensors to support and enhance ecosystems within cities. Nadina’s book offers a transformative perspective on how urban spaces can be reimagined in the face of climate change and sprawling development. She shares the inspiring story of the Groene Loper project in Maastricht, Netherlands, where soil sensors were deployed to monitor tree health. The results were remarkable, with trees supported by this technology growing up to three times larger than those without it. This is a powerful example of how technology can not only protect trees but also transform urban spaces into healthier, greener environments.
From fire and the wheel to the reinforced concrete frames that define modern buildings, we are surrounded by technology. We tend to forget that technology emerged in response to nature — too often, we treated nature as the enemy, the chaos to be contained instead of recognizing that nature’s cycles and changes are the harmony we need to join to sustain society. The loss of any semblance of natural patterns, which ultimately leads to the depletion of the resources necessary for life, has inevitably led to the collapse of previous major civilizations. Modern society has more runway than previous societies because we have created a global economy, but that risks an even greater fall for our species when the ecological underpinnings of our prosperity collapse. The Nature of Our Cities, is a powerful, straightforward, and emotionally resonant book to help you think through your role and choices in the restoration of nature. You can find it on Amazon or Powell’s Books.
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Editor’s Note: This episode originally aired in December 2024.
The post Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Author Nadina Galle on The Nature of Our Cities appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/earth911-podcast-nadina-galle-on-the-nature-of-our-cities/
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