Beating the heat: Europe prepares for climate change impacts

Show notes

In Europe and beyond, the summer of 2022 is hot. Very hot. A runway at a London airport melted in the heat and from Paris to Warsaw the grass in parks turned dry and yellow. The Rhine – the river flowing through Rotterdam, Köln and Strasbourg – is running dry. This is the same river that catastrophically flooded a year ago, destroying towns in Germany and Belgium. The impact of climate change on urban areas in Europe is unmistakable.

On one of those days when the temperature hit 30 degrees, the “Green Deal – Big Deal?” podcast host Ewa Iwaszuk from Ecologic Institute in Berlin speaks with her guests about the climate change impacts in cities and especially about the EU's plans on how to adapt to and better deal with those impacts. The discussion focuses on the possibilities that nature offers to help us cope with challenges such as heat and flooding.

Interview guests:

• Jenny Tröltzsch (Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and an expert in climate adaptation)
• McKenna Davis (Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and an expert on biodiversity and nature-based solutions)
• Tomasz Bergier (Professor at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków and vice president of the Sendzimir Foundation)

Relevant links & resources

• European Commission’s information portal on the EU Adaptation Strategy
• Addressing Climate Change in Cities – Catalogue of urban nature-based solutions
• Urban Nature Atlas
• Urban Governance Atlas – Call for Contributions