This summer, I interned at C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which is a global organization of 91 megacities concerned with addressing climate change. The structure of the organization is interesting—the strategic direction is defined by the elected mayors on the steering committee, and most of the funding comes from Bloomberg Philanthropies or other large donors. C40 staff is mainly involved in supporting the cities in combating climate change, whether it’s through compiling data or research or facilitating city connections, which is the job of the many networks that cities can choose to be a part of. I worked specifically with the Land Use Planning and Adaptation networks, developing a toolkit of case studies for cities to use. This involved researching city projects relating to land use and adaptation, interviewing city officials about the projects, and developing PowerPoints and other training materials so the projects could easily be shared with other cities. The toolkit is designed to allow city officials to train their employees to build capacity and integration between departments. This will be shared with the 25 or so C40 cities in the land use and adaptation networks, and hopefully with many more eventually.
The overall goal of the toolkit was to help cities integrate climate adaptation (proactively addressing the current or projected effects of climate change) into the work of urban planning departments. By the end of the summer, I had mostly completed 10 case studies (pending city approval) and made good progress on 10 or so more, and handed off the toolkit to another intern. It was wonderful to feel useful and be able to take the lead on a project that I hope will be helpful for many cities. After a semester abroad spent studying climate change in Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia and seeing how those countries are already being affected by climate change, it was encouraging to see what kinds of positive actions are being taken around the world, from limiting coastal development in Cape Town to turning a concrete channel into a park and floodplain in Singapore, to the many cities around the world that are implementing green roof regulations. It was also great exposure to the different kinds of environmental jobs out there, particularly for me since I’m not doing as much hard science or math—just within C40 there were jobs in communications, coalition-building, case studies, operations, and many more. Overall this summer was a further confirmation that I want to devote my life to environmental issues and causes, and now I have a better idea of the available options.
The overall goal of the toolkit was to help cities integrate climate adaptation (proactively addressing the current or projected effects of climate change) into the work of urban planning departments. By the end of the summer, I had mostly completed 10 case studies (pending city approval) and made good progress on 10 or so more, and handed off the toolkit to another intern. It was wonderful to feel useful and be able to take the lead on a project that I hope will be helpful for many cities. After a semester abroad spent studying climate change in Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia and seeing how those countries are already being affected by climate change, it was encouraging to see what kinds of positive actions are being taken around the world, from limiting coastal development in Cape Town to turning a concrete channel into a park and floodplain in Singapore, to the many cities around the world that are implementing green roof regulations. It was also great exposure to the different kinds of environmental jobs out there, particularly for me since I’m not doing as much hard science or math—just within C40 there were jobs in communications, coalition-building, case studies, operations, and many more. Overall this summer was a further confirmation that I want to devote my life to environmental issues and causes, and now I have a better idea of the available options.
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