A.

All around the world, nations are already preparing

for, and adapting to, climate change and its
impacts. Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions
tomorrow, we would continue to see the impact of
the CO2 already released since industrial times,
with scientists forecasting that global warming
would continue for around 40 years. In the
meantime, ice caps would continue to melt and sea
levels rise. Some countries and regions will suffer
more extreme impacts from these changes than
others. It’s in these places that innovation is
thriving.

B.

In Miami Beach, Florida, USA, seawater isn’t just

breaching the island city’s walls, it’s seeping up
through the ground, so the only way to save the
city is to lift it up above sea level. Starting in the
lowest and most vulnerable neighbourhoods, roads
have been raised by as much as 61 centimetres.
The elevation work was carried out as part of
Miami Beach’s ambitious but much-needed
stormwater-management programme. In addition
to the road adaptations, the city has set up new
pumps that can remove up to 75,000 litres of
water per minute. In the face of floods, climate-
mitigation strategies have often been overlooked,
says Yanira Pineda, a senior sustainability
coordinator. She knows that they’re essential and
that the job is far from over. ‘We know that in 20,
30, 40 years, we’ll need to go back in there and
adjust to the changing environment,’ she says.
C.

Seawalls are a staple strategy for many coastal

communities, but on the soft, muddy northern
shores of Java, Indonesia, they frequently collapse,
further exacerbating coastal erosion. There have
been many attempts to restore the island’s coastal
mangroves: ecosystems of trees and shrubs that
help defend coastal areas by trapping sediment in
their net-like root systems, elevating the sea bed
and dampening the energy of waves and tidal
currents. But Susanna Tol of the not-for-profit
organisation Wetlands International says that,
while hugely popular, the majority of mangrove-
planting projects fail. So, Wetlands International
started out with a different approach, building
semi-permeable dams, made from bamboo poles
and brushwood, to mimic the role of mangrove
roots and create favourable conditions for
mangroves to grow back naturally. The programme
has seen moderate success, mainly in areas with
less subsidence. “Unfortunately, traditional
infrastructure is often single-solution focused,’ says
Tol. ‘For long-term success, it’s critical that we
transition towards multifunctional approaches that
embed natural processes and that engage and
benefit communities and local decision-makers.”

D.

As the floodwaters rose in the rice fields of the

Mekong Delta in September 2018, four small
houses rose with them. Homes in this part of
Vietnam are traditionally built on stilts but these
ones had been built to float. The modifications
were made by the Buoyant Foundation Project, a
not-for-profit organisation that has been
 researching and retrofitting amphibious houses
since 2006. ‘When I started this,’ explains founder
Elizabeth English, ‘climate change was not on the
tip of everybody’s tongue, but this technology is
much cheaper than permanently elevating houses,
English explains – about a third of what it would
cost to completely replace a building’s foundations.
It also avoids the problem of taller houses being at
greater risk from wind damage. Another plus
comes from the fact that amphibious structures
can be sensitively adapted to meet cultural needs
and match the kind of houses that are already
common in a community.

E.

Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to climate

change. Most of the country is less than a metre
above sea level and 80 per cent of its land lies on
floodplains. ‘Almost 35 million people living on the
coastal belt of Bangladesh are currently affected
by soil and water salinity,’ says Raisa Chowdhury
of the international development organisation ICCO
Cooperation. Rather than fighting against it, one
project is helping communities adapt to salt-
affected soils. ICCO Cooperation has been working
with 10,000 farmers in Bangladesh to start
cultivating naturally salt-tolerant crops in the
region. Certain varieties of carrot, potato, kohlrabi,
cabbage and beetroot have been found to be
better suited to salty soil than the rice and wheat
that is typically grown there. Chowdhury says that
the results are very visible, comparing a barren
plot of land to the ‘beautiful, lush green vegetable
garden’ sitting beside it, in which he and his team
have been working with the farmers. Since the
 project began, farmers trained in saline agriculture
have reported increases of two to three more
harvests per year.

F.

Greg Spotts from Los Angeles (LA) in the USA is

chief sustainability officer of the city’s street
services department. He leads the Cool Streets LA
programme, a series of pilot projects, which
include the planting of trees and the installation of
a ‘cool pavement’ system, designed to help reach
the city’s goal of bringing down its average
temperature by 1.5°C. ‘Urban cooling is literally a
matter of life and death for our future in LA,’ says
Spotts. Using a Geographic Information System
data mapping tool, the programme identified
streets with low tree canopy cover in three of the
city’s neighbourhoods and covered them with a
light-grey, light-reflecting coating, which had
already been shown to lower road surface
temperature in Los Angeles by 6°C. Spotts says
one of these streets, in the Winnetka
neighbourhood of San Fernando Valley, can now be
seen as a pale crescent, the only cool spot on an
otherwise red thermal image, from the
International Space Station.