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As urban heat waves become more frequent and severe, meet the leaders on the frontlines of responding to extreme heat in cities. The Chief Heat Officers for Santiago, Chile, and Athens, Greece, discuss their innovative strategies to spread awareness of the dangers of heat, keep vulnerable residents safe in scorching temperatures, and create more green spaces to cool their cities down.

Extreme heat is creating major challenges for cities. The urban “heat island” effect traps cities in a bubble of scorching temperatures, which endangers lives and puts pressure on emergency services and infrastructure. Often the poorest neighbourhoods bear the worst consequences of rising heat waves. Andrew Lombardi discusses how heat exacerbates inequalities in cities and breaks down what cities can do to save lives now and enhance heat resilience through better policies and practices.

In 2015, the United Nations released the Sustainable Development Goals to help create a more sustainable and equitable world. The 17 goals included procurement systems, calling governments to procure in a more sustainable manner. But how does this actually work? How can governments include sustainability in their procurement systems? And can sustainable public procurement help mitigate the climate crisis? Steven Schooner, Professor of Government Procurement Law at George Washington University, helps us to answer these questions and more on this podcast. This is the second episode in the series with MAPS.

From the autumn of 2019 till the pandemic shutdowns, schoolchildren in the millions marched to save Earth from irreparable climate crisis. Calling on world leaders to keep the planet’s temperature rise below 1.5°C by cutting carbon emissions, teens organised an unprecedented scale of climate strikes around the globe. And they are still going. Evidence from PISA 2018 bears out Generation Z’s environmental commitment: more than 2/3 of 15-year-olds in every country and economy feel they need to take care of our planet. How do schools help students build on this momentum? Anuna De Wever was one of the founders of the youth climate strike movement in Belgium. She is now a trade policy officer at the European NGO, Climate Action Network.

The world is suffering from a devastating drought. According to an August report from the European Drought Observatory, nearly two-thirds of European territory is either experiencing drought or on high alert, due to stifling heatwaves and minimal rainfall. The consequences are far-reaching: electricity production, crop yields, and inland shipping are just a few of the sectors being hit, as wildfires expand and rivers run dry. Europe isn’t alone—from the Horn of Africa to the Western United States, severe drought is threatening lives and livelihoods. Xavier Leflaive, Water Team leader at the OECD Environment Directorate, joins host Karina Piser to discuss what’s at stake.

Lower your thermostat and bring a reusable bag. Commute by bicycle and recycle. These are all everyday life actions, promoted to help the climate change crisis. But how is it decided what changes we should make in our lives? How easily do people change their behaviour? Can it actually make a difference? Understanding human behaviour works hand-in-hand with climate change policy and we're speaking about this with Chiara Varazzani, OECD lead behavioural scientist and Kevin Green, Vice President of RARE, Centre for Behaviour in the Environment.

The data is clear: environmental degradation especially affects women, and women are more motivated to do something about it. Why is this so? Join us as we discuss the complex, multi-faceted relationship between women, climate change, air pollution, domestic violence, and green technology patents with Ingrid Barnsley, Deputy Director of the Environment Directorate at the OECD.

In the OECD’s PISA survey of 66 countries in 2018, 88% of high-school principals reported that climate change was covered in their school’s curriculum. But it was Italy that was the first country in the world to make climate change coursework mandatory in all public schools. As Italy’s Minister of Education, University and Research in 2019, Lorenzo Fioramonti drove Italy’s climate education reform. Nita Seng is a middle-school math and science teacher in the United States and co-director of Subject to Climate. She gives us the teacher’s point of view on reforming school curricula to integrate climate education.

Are cities our best hope for the planet? Ashok Sridharan, mayor of Bonn, Germany, thinks so. Part of the OECD’s Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth Initiative, Bonn is pursuing sustainable development in things like energy, transport and housing, while addressing the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. With half of the world’s population living in urban areas, which produce half of global waste, 80% of greenhouse gas emissions and over 70% of energy-related carbon emissions, what happens in cities is likely to determine our future.

Pandemics, flooding, cyber attack, wildfire. These are just some of the things that threaten our critical infrastructure and supply chains. We’ve engineered these for maximum efficiency and minimum risk. But what about resilience? Igor Linkov is the Risk and Decision Science Focus Area Lead at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center. He's also an Adjunct Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He discusses how to design for systems failure.

« Les questions d'environnement ne s’arrêtent pas aux frontières. Quand les problèmes sont globaux, mondiaux, les réponses doivent être globales, mondiales. » Président du Conseil constitutionnel et ancien ministre et Premier ministre, Laurent Fabius nous parle sans fard de l’urgence écologique. Climat, biodiversité… « il faut agir vite, parce que si l'on renvoie les choses à plus tard, ce sera trop tard. » Coopération, Pacte mondial pour l’environnement, pays en développement, mobilisation des jeunes, « transition juste » et changements nécessaires… La figure emblématique de la COP21 nous offre un tour d’horizon aussi constructif qu’instructif.

According to the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have 11 years to cut carbon emissions by half. And by 2050, carbon emissions must be eliminated. If not, humans will find themselves on an unliveable planet. David Wallace-Wells is the author of the New York Times' Bestseller, "The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming”. He describes for us what the world will be like if we go past a 2°C temperature rise. And what we have to do to avoid it.

Matsutake mushroom, a beloved Japanese delicacy, grow in what Anna Tsing calls “human-disturbed” environments. They do well in places that have been intensely logged or farmed, for instance. Which makes them model organisms for adverse conditions. Matsutake mushrooms can also teach us a thing or two about ecology and market economies. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Cruz. She is the author of The Mushroom at the end of the world. On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins.

Our oceans absorb 30% of the CO2 caused by greenhouse gas emissions. And they take in 90% of the heat that's caused by the same emissions. But our oceans are getting tired. UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, Peter Thomson, talks to us about ocean biodiversity, coral reefs and acidification. And the miracle of intertidal marshes, seagrass beds, lagoons, and mangrove forests.