Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • COMMENT

Six research priorities for cities and climate change

Xuemei Bai and colleagues call for long-term, cross-disciplinary studies to reduce carbon emissions and urban risks from global warming.
  1. Xuemei Bai

    1. Xuemei Bai is professor of urban environment and human ecology at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Richard J. Dawson

    1. School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  3. Diana Ürge-Vorsatz

    1. Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  4. Gian C. Delgado

    1. Interdisciplinary Research Center on Sciences and Humanities, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  5. Aliyu Salisu Barau

    1. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  6. Shobhakar Dhakal

    1. Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Asian Institute of Technology, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, Thailand.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  7. David Dodman

    1. International Institute for Environment and Development, London, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  8. Lykke Leonardsen

    1. Program for Resilient and Sustainable City Solutions, City of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  9. Valérie Masson-Delmotte

    1. IPSL/LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  10. Debra C. Roberts

    1. eThekwini Municipality; KwaZulu-Natal; and School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  11. Seth Schultz

    1. C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, New York City, New York, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Cities must address climate change. More than half of the world’s population is urban, and cities emit 75% of all carbon dioxide from energy use1. Meeting the target of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to keep warming well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels requires staying within a ‘carbon budget’ and emitting no more than around 800 gigatonnes of CO2 in total after 2017. Yet bringing the rest of the world up to the same infrastructure level as developed countries (those listed as Annex 1 to the Kyoto Protocol) by 2050 could take up to 350 gigatonnes of the remaining global carbon budget2. Much of this growth will be in cities in the developing world (see ‘Urban development challenge’).

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 555, 23-25 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-02409-z

References

  1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Müeller, D. B. et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 47, 11739–11746 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Barau, A. S., Maconachie, R., Ludin, A. N. M. & Abdulhamid, A. Land Use Policy 42, 307–317 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Fan, J. et al. Science 359, 411–418 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Peng, S. et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 46, 696–703 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Dodman, D., Mitlin, D. & Rayos Co, J. Int. Dev. Plan. Rev. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2009.10 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Dawson, R. J. et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2017.0298 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Ürge-Vorsatz, D. et al. Nature Clim. Change http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0100-6 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Peng, Y. & Bai, X. J. Clean. Prod. 174, 201–212 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Bai, X. et al. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 23, 69–78 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links