This summer Europe experienced a heatwave unlike few before, with temperatures reaching record levels across the continent. A recent book by Tony Arnold from the University of Louisville and Tiago de Melo Cartaxo from the University of Exeter argues that the laws that currently exist to protect the environment in European cities need to be considerably more flexible to protect citizens from climate change.
Such laws need to be adaptive if urban areas are to cope with the significant changes in both ecosystems and temperatures. There needs to be a shift from current laws, which might help to protect cities but do little to build resilience in them.
Resilient cities
“European cities could arguably be world leaders in bringing together climate adaptation, given the multiple layers of laws and institutional frameworks involving urban environments and environmental rights,” the authors explain. “As promising as urban and environmental laws in Europe may be, they do not yet fully have the adaptive institutional characteristics nor the justice- and capacity-building characteristics that are needed to merge climate adaptation with justice for and among marginalized and oppressed communities.”
The book was based on research, which found that it’s crucial for cities to develop this resilience, which can only be achieved when the economy, politics, the environment, and social conditions are connected.
This seldom happens, and the authors argue that it’s more common for the protection of the environment and natural resources to take priority. For instance, it’s more likely that protecting water quality will be the narrow focus rather than looking at the viability of broader ecosystems.
Flexible cities
“While European cities will benefit in their climate adaptation strategies from EU-level directives, top-down regulations, and coordination among networks of cities, they will also need legal and governance structures that create or maintain the authority to act at local, sub-local, private, public-private, and community-commons levels,” the authors explain.
“This will allow innovation and adaption to local contexts and lessens the risk of policy failures. They have high tolerance for uncertainty, whereas many legal systems demand certainty, which is incompatible with environmental or climate realities.”
They conclude by saying that flexibility in decision-making has to go hand in hand with flexible legal frameworks so that abuses of power are curbed. Together, they believe the changes wrought by climate change can be effectively managed by cities.
“The adaptive multi-tool characteristics of climate-adaptation governance in European cities should be harnessed to address the many vulnerabilities that marginalized communities face and that affect their capacities to adapt to climate change,” they say. “These include: housing supply, affordability, and quality; food insecurity; energy insecurity and environmental injustices.
“Climate-adaptation laws, plans, and policies should include specific resilience-justice goals and targets, as well as mandatory mechanisms for reporting and monitoring of the many variables and conditions that affect the adaptive capacities of marginalized communities.”
