Rising temperatures and increasingly frequent heat waves due to climate change make many Mediterranean cities dangerous places, especially for vulnerable groups. “We don’t focus enough on how extreme temperatures affect urban environments,” says Eleni Myrivili, who has been studying the issue for years in her hometown of Athens, which is one of the cities hardest hit by rising temperatures. In 2014 she was elected Deputy Mayor of Athens for Urban Nature and Climate Resilience and after a stay at Harvard University to study cities’ resilience to high temperatures, she returned to Greece to become the first Chief Heat Officer in a European city. Her work in this area has earned her the position of Global Chief Heat Officer at UN Habitat. She speaks to EL PAÍS as Greece is hit by the worst heatwave on record.
Ask. What is the job of a heat officer?
Answer. To protect the most vulnerable people – so fewer people die from high temperatures – and integrate various measures into the city to make it cooler. There are many aspects in a city that affect heat and someone has to coordinate them. Imagine you have a lot of money and you buy air conditioning for everyone: we would end up in such cities where everyone lives indoors and going outside is unbearable. And in Europe, in the Mediterranean cities, the beauty is outside: we love to drink wine or beer in the evenings, have fun, walk and talk. It would be terrible if our cities ended up being uninhabitable. This is the nightmare we must avoid: we cannot turn our cities into those of Abu Dhabi or Qatar.
Q However, in most European cities there is no heat officer.
TO. This does not necessarily have to be a heat officer, it can also be people who work in the field of sustainability or resilience. Cities are creating departments that work more horizontally and less in isolation.
Q How can cities cool down?
TO. The most important thing is to bring nature into the cities in a much more radical way than before: nature and water are the key to cooling them down. Trees not only provide shade, but also evaporate and recover thermal energy, which also cools the surrounding area. We also need shade because it improves our sense of warmth. We need to ensure that our public spaces have more water, more shade and fewer cars because cars are a problem in cities: they generate heat because they burn fossil fuels and they emit hot air just like air conditioners. Cars and air conditioning make our public spaces hotter. That is why we must give up cars and keep air conditioning to a minimum, especially for people who need it. We must also look for water-permeable materials that do not absorb heat and increase building shading and airflow.
Tourists on the landmark of Madrid, the Puerta del Sol. DAVID EXPOSITO
Q What is Athens doing to mitigate the high temperatures?
TO. We do things in three categories: awareness, preparation and redesign. As a first step, we try to make people (journalists, politicians, everyone) understand how dangerous heat is: that we have longer, more intense and more frequent heat waves and that they are getting worse. Extreme heat killed more than 60,000 people in Europe last year, an enormous number, especially compared to any other disaster. But we’re still not ready. Until now we have not known how to properly quantify the number of heat deaths because many end up in the hospital and die of a heart attack or something else and they are not reported as heat related deaths; Now let’s count the excess mortality.
Q What else did you do?
TO. We classified heatwaves – something [Spanish city] Seville does the same – with a specific algorithm for Athens. We use this algorithm to measure risk for people in three categories: 1, 2 and 3. Three is very dangerous, we had one a few days ago. It’s important to categorize heat waves because that’s how our brain works: we think in categories for the most dangerous things. Also this year we are starting to give a name to the heatwaves in Greece, which Seville did with Zoe last year. If you give it a name, people take it seriously, they understand that it’s something that exists and that it’s dangerous.
Q And how is the risk communicated to the population?
TO. We have an early warning system in place: depending on the category, we send differentiated alerts to both social services staff working with the vulnerable population and those staying in nursing homes. They are messages that explain what to do to protect yourself from the heat, that there are certain times when you should not go outside… We also have a program to visit the elderly in their homes to make sure they are okay. And this information is given to day centers, the coordination centers of NGOs that work with refugees or immigrants, with homeless people… We try to inform those who work with vulnerable people.
Q What measures have been taken to be prepared for extreme heat?
TO. We have set up a hotline that people can call if they need help or have a question [about the heat]. The event will be attended by city officials and the Red Cross. We’ve also created a website so people know how to take care of themselves, cool their homes and what to do when they get heat stroke. In addition, we have a mobile app called Extrema Global that tells you every day what your personal risk is when you walk around the city and where are the coolest places to visit, from public facilities with air conditioning to train stations, subway stations, swimming pools, parks… The app also tells you how to get from point A to point B through the coolest streets because that’s where all the trees are. The Red Cross brings vans with water and information to tourist areas. And we’ve opened cool places for people to go during heat waves.
Q These people could be considered climate refugees.
TO. forks. Cooling centers are necessary for people who are in a situation of energy poverty or who are not doing well at home. It would be great if people could come together in such air-conditioned places, especially the lonely, the elderly and the vulnerable. But at the moment they generally don’t go there because they feel stigmatized there, because it seems that only the poor go there. We need to make them more interesting places or link them to cultural events. We open cold centers, but many people don’t go. You also need to create refreshing outdoor areas with shaded areas and children’s play areas to make them more attractive to everyone.
Q What is urban transformation?
TO. We have created some guidelines on how to cool public spaces – streets, squares and parks – with plants, water and different materials. But if we don’t restrict cars and asphalt in cities, we don’t have enough space to make them cooler. This space can be used to create linear parks on the streets. We have created small, very dense green areas, so-called pocket parks, in streets and intersections, which contribute to increasing biodiversity and favoring the wind. In addition, we have created narrower lanes, so cars have to drive more slowly. Spain is doing incredible things in this area: Barcelona are taking space away from cars to build super blocks. And in Oslo, most cars have already been abolished.
One of the pocket parks created by the city of Athens.
Q What do you think of building squares without shade, like the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid?
TO. Today it is criminal to build squares without shade or cooling elements because this creates higher temperatures in the city, endangers human life and keeps people away from public space. It’s very crazy to design squares as if climate change didn’t exist.
Q What happens to cities that don’t adapt?
TO. Many people will die in these cities and many others will lose their jobs. It will have an impact on the economy because a lot of income is lost due to extreme heat: productivity drops, people go to shops less because they stay at home… And we have to work hard to avoid water and food shortages and power cuts during heat waves. Adaptation has to do with food and medicine, logistics, and the people who will be hospitalized and die. We need to prepare our hospitals for days of extreme heat.
Q Why is it so important to talk about heat?
TO. The heat is highlighting the vulnerability of our cities, hitting those who are worst off: those who are physically or mentally ill, as well as the elderly and young children; It affects the most vulnerable people in our society, those who do not have good housing, who are poorly paid, who suffer from energy poverty and who cannot turn on the air conditioning or live in good conditions, people who cannot afford to drive a car or take a plane and go to a cooler place when it is very hot in the city. These people need to be protected.
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