Webinar Addresses Urban Resilience in the Face of El Niño Phenomenon

• Experts discuss strategies to mitigate the impact of urban warming in the conference series organized by SISCA, Habitat for Humanity, and Urban Housing Practitioners Hub.

On May 30, a webinar was held as part of the conference series "Habitat and Resilient Housing: Responses and Adaptation to the El Niño Phenomenon," organized by the Central American Social Integration Secretariat (SISCA), Habitat for Humanity, and Urban Housing Practitioners Hub. At this event, Lenin Corrales, senior researcher of the Climate Action Unit at CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), presented a talk titled: Climate Risk in the Central American Urban Environment: Beyond the El Niño Phenomenon.

The focus of Corrales' presentation was on the warming of cities and its impact on inhabitants in terms of health, employment, and recreation. He explained why this phenomenon occurs and the need to make cities greener as an adaptation measure. This topic is highly relevant to the current public due to the new risks posed by global warming faced by urban residents.

Among the key points Corrales aimed to convey, he highlighted that the Central American region is an area of contrasts in climate-related events, such as tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, forest fires, heat islands, and sea level rise. “Urban heat islands are already occurring in the region, which are caused by the absence of green areas, increased gray infrastructure, and poor urban planning,” Corrales indicated.

Furthermore, he pointed out the existence of green inequality in cities and the need for a change in urban design and the transformation of already developed areas.

Reactions from the audience and other experts present underscored the importance of understanding how and where cities are warming, as well as the need to bring these findings to municipalities to improve urban planning and the design of housing and public service infrastructure.

From his experience, Corrales commented that the study of the relationship between urban warming and ecosystem services of biodiversity as alternatives for climate change adaptation should continue.

He also emphasized the importance of analyzing the impacts of surface warming on working hours and the economic and health losses this implies for agricultural workers, many of whom live in urbanized areas.

The results presented by Corrales in this forum are part of research that CATIE has been developing since 2019, with the aim of identifying the impact of urban warming to propose regulations in cantonal regulatory plans that lead to climate change adaptation in cities.