--- title: 2030 Cities: Climate Change Is “A Health Crisis” and Cities Are the Front Line | TIME description: “While [cities] are particularly vulnerable, they're also woefully underprepared for what is coming,” says Naveem Rao, senior vice president of the Health Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. canonical: https://time.com/video/faKC9fJq/ og:title: 2030 Cities: Climate Change Is “A Health Crisis” and Cities Are the Front Line og:description: “While [cities] are particularly vulnerable, they're also woefully underprepared for what is coming,” says Naveem Rao, senior vice president of the Health Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. og:url: https://time.com/video/faKC9fJq/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/faKC9fJq/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 2030 Cities: Climate Change Is “A Health Crisis” and Cities Are the Front Line twitter:description: “While [cities] are particularly vulnerable, they're also woefully underprepared for what is coming,” says Naveem Rao, senior vice president of the Health Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/faKC9fJq/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 2030 Cities: Climate Change Is “A Health Crisis” and Cities Are the Front Line > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 2030 Cities: Climate Change Is “A Health Crisis” and Cities Are the Front Line [Watch (HLS stream): 2030 Cities: Climate Change Is “A Health Crisis” and Cities Are the Front Line](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/faKC9fJq.m3u8) (4:59)  _Published 2024-09-25. “While cities are particularly vulnerable, they're also woefully underprepared for what is coming,” says Naveem Rao, senior vice president of the Health Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation._ --- Oct 7, 2024 10:36 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [2030 Cities: This Industry Wants a More Concrete Solution to Climate Change](/video/223IpBu1/) ### 2030 Cities: This Industry Wants a More Concrete Solution to Climate Change [Kiribati: See Life on the Front Lines of Climate Change](/video/mQPqsfCg/) ### Kiribati: See Life on the Front Lines of Climate Change ['Which Way is the Front Line From Here' Trailer](/video/iTCy90Sp/) ### 'Which Way is the Front Line From Here' Trailer --- ## Transcript Seven out of ten people will be living in cities by 2050. Add to that that over 1 billion people live in informal settlements in these cities. These cities are uniquely at risk for climate change induced health effects. Certain cities. They are what we call concrete heat islands, because of the lack of green space and concrete temperatures in those parts of the cities that have been traditionally underfunded and underdeveloped, on an average of twice the outlying areas. Then we have a lot of cities that are close to water sources. And these cities are particularly prone to flooding and to drought. Then you throw into the mix. The air pollution, 90% of all city residents are breathing unhealthy air that leads them to risk for cardiovascular and lung disa. The cities are woefully underprepared for what is coming down the pike, which is all the health effects that are currently plaguing us are going to be exacerbated by climate change. The first prong of the three prong is to collaborate meteorological data with the health data. Many cities have good climate prediction data. And then across the street is the health department that has good health systems data, but only 23% of health officials right now utilize meteorological data when they are making plans. And a lot of them don't understand that their plans are going to be thrown in disarray because of either a flood, st, a heat wave. The second is to make sure it's a multi factorial and multi sectorial approach to the problem. Get in the urban planning people, the transportation people, the education people, the civil society, all hands on deck, because the effect of climate change on health, you're not able to contain it just by the health systems. And the third prong is, we need to make sure the resources at the right place, the communication at the right place, as we say, we need two things. We need the smoke alarm, and you need the fire engine. Smoke alarm going off in wilderness without a fire engine makes no sense, and a fire engine all prepared and ready without knowing where to go, makes no sense. But what needs to hold this whole thing together is more funding. Lot of the attention is on mitigation, and we need the mitigation focus, which is to take carbon out of the air because we can't adapt our way out of this problem. But having said that, communities and people, especially vulnerable communities and vulnerable countries that have done the least to cause this problem are suffering the most. And we need to get some adaptation funding, and we need to increase it. And the estimate right now is we need about $11,000,000,000 a year to be able to fully fund all the adaptation plans that are necessary. It actually makes sense to be able to get ahead of this, put more money into adaptation, prevention, rather than scramble and try to then stem the tide later once the effect has happened. They say, when you have health, you want a lot of other things in life. But when you don't have health, there is only one thing you want. So people don't realize that unless the community is healthy, all your other investment plans will go for n. So we need to come together and do this, and I am hopeful. We have put on the table a commitment for 100 million over the next five years to be able to do our bit to get these cities and to get these communities at the right place. Suddenly, a leader shows up, that gets it, that is committed. And then when you put systems around that person and show him or her the playbook and what is possible. It is amazing how far and how quickly they move. In each of these, the solutions came from bottom up. It was a local solution. In certain cases, we'd have never thought of some of those adaptation plans that they put in place. Some of them were low tech, high impact, and they were not always something that you needed others to come in, the community would get involved because it was their plan. So we're showing that it can be done. And that's why I'm hopeful. 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