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U.N. global chief heat officer warns of the acute dangers of rising temperatures in cities

2023-07-31T15:40:00-04:00

Rising temperatures and increasingly frequent heat waves driven by climate change are turning many Mediterranean cities into dangerous places, especially for vulnerable groups. “We are not focusing enough on how extreme temperatures affect urban environments,” says Eleni Myrivili, who has spent years studying this issue in her hometown of Athens, which is one of the cities hardest hit by rising temperatures.

Amid devastating wildfires and record-breaking numbers of heat-related casualties throughout the Mediterranean region, Spanish newspaper EL PAÍS sits down with Eleni Myrivili, chief heat officer of Athens (Europe's first such municipal appointment) and also global chief heat officer to U.N. Habitat, to learn which concrete design and policy strategies can improve urban live in cities and help protect especially the most vulnerable groups.

Myrivili isn't holding back harsh criticism when she comments on an example of public urban design she deems inadequate for today's challenges — Madrid's Puerta del Sol square — saying, "Today, It is criminal to build squares without shade or cooling elements, because they create higher temperatures in the city, put people’s lives at risk and keep people away from public space."

Speaking also to The Guardian recently, Myrivili remarked on the increasing challenges of heat in cities and the built environment: "People are just starting to realize th...

Planting trees could lead to fewer heat-related deaths in urban areas, according to a new study

2023-02-03T17:32:00-05:00

A new scientific study has shown the positive correlations between public health and tree planting in urban areas.

In a report published recently by The Lancet medical science journal, a team of European researchers shared data on mortality rates in 93 cities in the summer of 2015 that showed how premature deaths caused by urban heat islands can be mitigated through increased greening strategies.

The study found 6,700 premature deaths in that period related to the phenomenon. One-third of those deaths, according to the authors, could have been prevented by adding 30% more trees in the urban environments of each city. The data supports established notions that particularly low-income communities can benefit from resiliency measures, adding to a growing chorus of scholarship at a time when climate change is becoming a moribund issue for cities worldwide at an accelerated pace.

Ci...

Chief Heat Officer Eugenia Kargbo discusses extreme heat mitigation in Freetown, Sierra Leone

2022-08-09T14:30:00-04:00

Kargbo grew up to become a banker, but she has spent the last several years working in the administration of Freetown mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, a noted climate activist. Before becoming the city’s chief heat officer, she headed up the city’s sanitation department [...] Kargbo says her work is to keep climate change on the agenda, however many other things are tugging the world’s attention away.

A former aide to the noted climate activist Mayor of Freetown Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Eugenia Kargbo is one of five official Chief Heat Officers (CHOs) in the world. After being appointed in 2021, she joins fellow CHOs from Athens, Miami, Santiago, Chile, and Monterrey, Mexico in a program sponsored by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock).

Arsht-Rock, along with the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance (EHRA), developed and piloted the role of CHOs to have officials "charged with unifying the response to the challenge of heat to reduce risks and impacts of extreme heat for their residents and constituents."

For these officers appointed by local officials in their cities, much of the work entails attempting to consolidate their communities' disparate (and sometimes madcap) efforts to address climate issues that are too often spread between conflicting bureaucratic hierarchies.

Meet the current Chief Heat Officers. Image courtesy of Adr...

Monterrey, Mexico is the latest city to employ a full-time Chief Heat Officer

2022-06-17T14:45:00-04:00

In time for the start of summer, the global fraternity of Chief Heat Officers has grown as cities decide to commit themselves to full-time professionals from the subfield of public design in the face of mounting challenges caused by climate change.

The city of Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, recently announced architect and urban planner Surella Segú as the first-ever head of its new civic office, which is being funded through a partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock).

Surella Segú. Image courtesy Harvard University.

The 2018 Harvard Loeb Fellow is the principal and co-founder of EL CIELO, an 18-year-old practice with a focus on housing and urban renewal, and the former head of the Urban Development at the country’s Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers.

A graduate of the Columbia University GSAPP and the ITESM, she now holds the fifth official CHO title under the Council's new City Cha...

Athens has hired a new 'Chief Heat Officer' to help the city combat climate change

2021-08-26T16:45:00-04:00

Europe’s summer of natural disasters has included increasingly frequent extreme weather events [...] Ms. Myrivili’s appointment is a recognition of that new reality. But it is also a foreboding sign that having someone to grapple with suffocating temperatures may be a mainstay of the municipal cityscape, as necessary and unremarkable as a transportation, sanitation or police commissioner.

Other cities like Miami have retained administrators with similar titles. Athens is leading the way in terms of a loss of residents who are in large part moving to escape the heat. The country itself is expected to lose 8 million people in the next four years. Myrivili earned a PhD from Columbia University in 2004 and served as Athens' Deputy Mayor for Urban Nature, Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation from 2017 to 2019.

A scorching mid-summer heatwave combined with wildfires has forced the closure of several important cultural sites around the city.

The New York Times has a profile of Athens' newest city administrator here.