Locations
#Beat the Heat Campaign
Let's fight extreme heat and build a cooler, safer future!
Photo credit: UNDP Nepal
Extreme Heat: A Growing Global Crisis
Over 350 cities around the world, home to over 200 million people, are vulnerable to extreme heat, and about 14% of people living in cities are already experiencing extreme temperatures. This is because the peculiar built environment of the cities makes surface temperatures 10 - 15°C higher than the surrounding areas, depending on the geographical locale, creating what is known as the urban heat island effect. Considering that half of humanity is already urban, and that more than 68% of the world’s population is estimated to live in cities by 2050, heatwave resilience becomes a necessity for sustainable urban development.
Photo credit: UNDP Afghanistan
Why Does Extreme Heat Matter?
Rising heat waves and the heat island effect in cities are causing more deaths than hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning combined. Vulnerable groups, like children, elderly, women, daily wage earners, and low-income workers and communities face a much higher risk. Beyond causing heat strokes and other ill-effects on health, extreme heat reduces productivity, undermines livelihoods and employment, creates water shortages, and causes wildfires.
Photo credit: Lu Gang/UNDP China
UNDP’s Commitment to Heat Resilience
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) addresses the existing, and emerging, impacts of heat by implementing extreme heat mitigation and heatwave resilience building interventions as part of its Urban Risk Management and Resilience Strategy.
Together with global, national, and local partners including city/municipal authorities, sectoral agencies, and communities, UNDP is launching the “#BeatTheHeat” Campaign to support city stakeholders and communities to identify and implement heatwave solutions with a focus on children, elderly, women, and other vulnerable segments of urban society.
Our Plan: Heat Resilience Interventions
As part of these initiatives, the city level interventions will foster a partnership-based approach to
Join Us: ‘Our City – Our Action’
Under the slogan ‘Our City-Our Action’ UNDP promotes an all-hands-on-deck approach to create cool spaces to beat the heat and build a culture of collective action. We’re inviting students, community organizations, businesses, you and your friends to help identify and support concrete solutions to reduce heatwave and heat island effects.
Explore our city campaigns:
Let all cool people from around the world come together for ‘Our City – Our Action’ Campaign to #BeatTheHeat!
Got an idea to help cities #BeatTheHeat? Share your solutions with Rajeev.issar@undp.org and Vanessa.schultz@undp.org