In early May, you could hear a pin drop in Bangladesh’s classrooms and playgrounds, as the country’s schools and colleges closed in response to a ferocious heatwave. But there was no respite for rickshaw driver Mohammed Shameem, who had no choice but to ply his trade in the roasting, congested streets of Dhaka. “It is too hard to work under the sun during a brutal heatwave,” he told Reuters. Meanwhile, over in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, citizens were launching a rescue operation with boats and jet skis to save their neighbors from the city’s most devastating floods since 1941. Marcelo Moreira Ferreira only sought shelter and abandoned the house his father built and where he had lived his whole life when the muddy waters of the Guiaba Lake reached his chest, The Guardian wrote. Although Shameen and Ferreira live on opposite sides of the world, their plight is an urgent reminder that climate action needs to remain two-pronged: Mitigation and adaptation. We must keep reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the root cause of global warming. But we must also make our towns and cities more resilient. This includes strengthening roads, dams, bridges, and power grids to withstand extreme weather, and also

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) concluded last month after 14 days of negotiations. While opinions on its success may vary, I view the outcomes of COP28 as a historic and significant stride towards achieving net zero by 2050. Noteworthy progress was made during COP28’s pre-scheduled agenda, including the decision to involve cities at the negotiating table to ensure climate action reaches those responsible for implementing it locally, as well as agreements about how the globe can best adapt to the impacts of climate change (which I expect to cover in a future post). Most importantly, a milestone Global Stocktake agreement was reached after climate talks were forced into overtime to bridge internal divisions about how to deal with fossil fuels. This agreement stipulates a just and orderly transition away from fossil fuels and sets a new specific carbon reduction target: tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 to help close the energy transition gap and get on a 1.5°C pathway. Supplemented by other governmental commitments linked to public construction projects, this agreement will have profound implications for how infrastructure is designed, built, and operated. Why such profound implications? Because our current infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels.