Climate change mitigation in cities: a systematic scoping of case studies

Abstract

A growing number of researchers and stakeholders have started to address climate change from the bottom up: by devising scientific models, climate plans, low-carbon strategies and development policies with climate co-benefits. Little is known about the comparative characteristics of these interventions, including their relative efficacy, potentials and emissions reductions. A more systematic understanding is required to delineate the urban mitigation space and inform decision-making. Here, we utilize bibliometric methods and machine learning to meta-analyze 5635 urban case studies of climate change mitigation. We identify 867 studies that explicitly consider technological or policy instruments, and categorize these studies according to policy type, sector, abatement potential, and socio-technological composition to obtain a first heuristic of what is their pattern. Overall, we find 41 different urban solutions with an average GHG abatement potential ranging from 5.2% to 105%, most of them clustering in the building and transport sectors. More than three-fourth of the solutions are on demand side. Less than 10% of all studies were ex-post policy evaluations. Our results demonstrate that technology-oriented interventions in urban waste, transport and energy sectors have the highest marginal abatement potential, while system-wide interventions, e.g. urban form related measures have lower marginal abatement potential but wider scope. We also demonstrate that integrating measures across urban sectors realizes synergies in GHG emission reductions. Our results reveal a rich evidence of techno-policy choices that together enlarge the urban solutions space and augment actions currently considered in global assessments of climate mitigation.

The 2022 India Report Card on physical activity for children and adolescents

“…Nevertheless, as India's population continues to become more urban with consistent economic growth, 50 it is critical to facilitate urban planning to improve active transportation, an approach 51 that can minimize alarming levels of air pollution in Indian cities, 52 , 53 and potentially mitigate climate change impacts. 54 , 55 …”

Integrated Climate Action Planning (ICLAP) in Asia-Pacific Cities: Analytical Modelling for Collaborative Decision Making

“…Most interpret integration as a combination of different activities or sectors within mitigation and adaptation verticals. In mitigation, these include combining the study of controlling GHG emissions with reducing local pollutants (e.g., SO2, NOx, CO, and PM) or combining policies of energy conservation, transportation, climate change and air pollutant control [13,14]. In adaptation, an integrated approach largely focuses on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, or socio-economic development, environmental conservation and disaster risk reduction [15], or enhancing benefits by using socio-ecological systems to enhance governance, adaptive capacity and resilience [16].…”

“…Bibliometric-meta-analysis of evidence from case studies: data science and machine learning methods are to be used for systematic review of global case studies in local climate action. It employs Web of Science, a Google Scholar-like database, to conduct a bibliometric analysis, followed by a meta-analysis of key policy solutions [14,68,69] while coding for diverse GHG sectors (energy, industry, transport, LULUCF, waste, etc. ), expost policy solutions, their relative efficiency and most importantly governance modes [70], i.e., regulations, enabling mechanisms, economic instruments and voluntary measures.…”

Reimagining climate networking between cities: clustering cities based on a large dataset of mitigation actions

“…Although it addresses the calls by other scholars [32,[34][35][36][37], it might not provide a complete insight into the context. Therefore, unlike previous studies that relied on biased search engines (as in [30,38]) or best practices of powerful cities [39], such public repositories can expand our knowledge of a diverse range of cities.…”