By Núria Pérez Viura, Seawater Solutions Chief Marketing Officer
World Habitat Day marks the beginning of a month to think about the current situation of our cities and towns and the right for all of us to have a decent shelter. This year the World Habitat Day’s theme is ‘Accelerating Urban Action for a Carbon-free World’.
Considering that cities account for 70% of the carbon dioxide emissions in the world, it is needless to say that governments and organisations, locally, but even more importantly, internationally, need to agree on common strategies to make our cities inclusive, sustainable and carbon-neutral.
Race to Zero and ClimateAction4Cities are two global campaigns organised by the United Nations Climate Change and the United Nations Habitat respectively, that intend to encourage local governments to make a zero-carbon action plan in anticipation of COP26.
While this is a big step in making local governments more accountable and pro-active, this November we would like to see international agreements, long term strategies and immediate action in place.
At Seawater Solutions we continue working to transform degraded land into wetland ecosystems to restore livelihoods and biodiversity in rural and urban areas in Ghana, Spain, Scotland and Vietnam.
We encourage organisations to take the lead in sustainability to foster a bottom-up climate action to accelerate government plans.