Creating Future-Proof Cities

Creating Future-Proof Cities: How to Navigate the Climate Crisis

What can you do to help your city adapt to the realities of climate change? This book demystifies the climate crisis and prescribes a localised response, using Penang, Malaysia, as a case study. Policymakers, social entrepreneurs and community practitioners can learn how to accelerate mitigation efforts and improve resilience.

This publication cuts through the jargon and serves as a practical guide to individuals, communities and cities to step up action to curb the rise of global temperatures and adapt to future norms. Collective and institutional approaches are urgently needed in the fields of culture, energy, mobility, waste, and land use. Action on these fronts begin with awareness.

Watch the Astrowani interviews hosted by Melisa Idris and Sharaad Kuttan with the authors! Links below.

About the authors
Murali Ram is a Master’s candidate in Sustainable Development Management at the Jeffrey Sachs Center for Sustainable Development, Sunway University. In 2018, Murali participated in the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Programme on Resilient Cities and Urban Sustainability. As Programme Director with Think City, a Malaysian social impact organisation, Murali leads the Butterworth and George Town Urban Regeneration Programmes working in partnership with the city councils of Seberang Perai and Penang Island (where he previously served as a city councillor). In 2019, he was appointed to the advisory committee for the Penang Green Agenda.

Rexy Prakash Chacko is a nature-loving electrical engineer. He is an active participant in Penang’s vibrant civil society, focusing his efforts on safeguarding the state’s natural wealth. He co-founded Penang Hills Watch in 2016, using Ushahidi, a crowdsourced mapping platform. He was the project lead for a research group conducting a cultural heritage asset survey of Jerejak Island in 2017 and became one of the founding members of the Penang River Awareness Project team in 2018. His varied interests include land use planning, urban forestry and climate change adaptation. An avid hiker, he authored a trekking guide titled Nature Trails of Seberang Perai (2019).

Table of contents

FOREWORD
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1 • WHY DO WE NEED A CLIMATE
RESILIENCE STRATEGY?

2 • PENANG AS ILLUSTRATION
International commitments
relevant to Malaysia
SDG 11 targets relevant to Malaysia
SDG 13 actions relevant to Malaysia
SDG 12 targets relevant to Malaysia

3 • CLIMATE ACTION – WHAT CAN
WE DO
Mitigation – priorities
Top 20 suggested actions
What we can do as individuals

4 • BECOMING CARBON NEUTRAL
The role of our forests
Peat swamps
Mangrove swamps
Lessons from Costa Rica
Tropical rainforests
Data-driven decision making

5 • ENERGY DIVERSIFICATION
Energy conservation
What is the Green Economy?

6 • SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY
Visions and goals for sustainable mobility
Planning for Low Carbon Cities
Transport nightmare turns dream
in Mexico City

7 • TRASH TO CASH; WASTE TO
ENERGY
Waste reduction
Expand recycling initiatives
Making waste a resource
Treating hydroflourocarbons (HFCs) at
air-conditioning disposal points
River pollution and illegal waste dumping
Making good use of waste in Los Angeles

8 • CONNECTING CULTURE AND
CLIMATE ACTION 50
A breath of clean air
A Clean Air Action Plan
Los Angeles’ war on smog

9 • URBAN COOLING STRATEGIES
Natural systems
Artificial systems
Cooling down Melbourne

10 • RESILIENCE INFRASTRUCTURE
TO ADDRESS FLOODING
Sponge Cities of China
Combating floods in the People’s
Republic of China
Coastal and wetlands protection
in Sri Lanka

11 • PRESERVING ECO-SYSTEM
SERVICES
Density amidst biodiversity in
Hong Kong
The Hong Kong biodiversity strategy
and action plan (2016–2021)

12 • SECURING OUR WATER ASSETS
Safeguarding and expanding our
water sources
Taps run dry in Africa’s tourist city
Water scarcity in Egypt

13 • IMPLEMENTATION, CITY
FINANCING AND FUNDING
City financing
Funding for climate resilience
Implementation steps

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Melisa Idris and Sharaad Kuttan speak to Murali Ram and Rexy Prakash Chacko, co-authors of the newly-launched book Creating Future-Proof Cities, How to Navigate the Climate Crisis. They discuss the use of technology in responding to the climate crisis and the success stories of cities taking the right steps to prepare for the future, and the mitigation and adaptation responses to the climate crisis.