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Think global, act local to transform cities and our planet

WITH urbanisation here to stay, our future lies in our cities. According to the Second National Urbanisation Policy report, Malaysia's urban population is expected to increase from 20.29 million in 2010 to 27.3 million by 2025.

While cities lie at the forefront of climate change, accounting for over 70 per cent of global carbon emissions,  they also have great potential as catalysts for change as hubs for innovation and creativity, offering solutions for a sustainable future.

As we reflect on World Cities Day, not only must we continue to recognise the role cities play in realising global sustainable development, this year's theme of 'Act Local to Go Global' highlights that any transformative global agenda must first be localised within our current urban fabric, through knowledge, solutions, and partnerships.

Firstly, we need to apply a local lens to environmental issues, and what it means for global climate action. Climate change is affecting countries all around the world. Notably, the interdependency of water and energy is intensifying, impacting both energy and water security.

However, how these issues manifest from city to city varies, and require a crucial understanding of local conditions and concerns.

Cities across Malaysia, already grappling with the effects of urbanisation, are increasingly experiencing extreme weather events such as floods and heatwaves. Severe floods experienced last December caused nearly $1.5 billion in damages.

It is vital that we do not lose sight of the local context while tackling the global issue of climate change. Only by taking a ground-up approach on understanding climate change can we ensure that no one is left behind.

Meanwhile, local sustainable urban solutions that cities have been developing and adapting to mitigate their new climate future can contribute to a broader global toolbox.

A prime example is China's sponge cities, which utilise nature-based solutions to address issues that come with grey infrastructure in the face of worsening urban floods.

While the concept was adapted from predecessors around the world, China's approach has been touted as a "revolutionary rethink" in urban planning.

Cities also are increasingly incorporating digital technologies to further bolster climate resilience and achieve greater resource efficiencies, including Malaysia's own smart city ambitions that have evolved since the development of Cyberjaya.

Digitalisation can help cities navigate the trade-offs between more substantial sustainability efforts and their perceived barriers, including reimagining water systems.

For example, by working with solution providers to connect the pumping solutions in a city's water processes via a cloud platform, or leveraging advanced analytics and algorithms to predict leaks, some cities are already attaining significant energy optimisation in their water and wastewater network.

Building solution providers are also increasingly looking at smart technology to achieve systems that can operate in optimised conditions and use water and energy efficiently.

While many of these solutions were developed with the local urban environment in mind, rapid urbanisation means that cities are finding greater similarities in their experiences of climate change.

Key learnings and best practices from such case studies can provide powerful insights regionally and even globally.

Lastly, continuous knowledge-building calls for inclusive collaboration locally and globally.

Global partners can leverage their network and reach to link up the necessary stakeholders, resources, and expertise to bring an initiative to life, while local collaborators can not only provide insights from the local landscape, but also recommendations for the best way forward.

For instance, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group partnered with Grundfos and the Grundfos Foundation on the Water Safe Cities project, where the first phase of the research quantified the dire impacts of climate-driven drought and flooding on the world's largest cities and its residents, including Kuala Lumpur.

These insights have subsequently helped launch the project's second phase to work on a Water Accelerator for cities to pledge action to safeguard their water supply.

The project provides a starting point for wider collaboration between cities, national governments, and the private sector, all of whom have an incentive to protect cities from water risks.

Many cities around the world are already formulating and implementing innovative policies, projects, and programmes designed to achieve sustainable development.

The sharing and harmonisation of these actions will help us determine the best of what each city has to offer and allow us to extrapolate these, to drive the global push for a more sustainable world and future.


The writer is CEO, Grundfos

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