Why cities are hiring dedicated officials to prepare for extreme heat 

When Jane Gilbert heard last April that she had been appointed Miami-Dade County’s chief heat officer — a first for both the United States and the world — she was not surprised. Already employed as the first chief resilience officer of the City of Miami, one of the 34 municipal areas under the Miami-Dade County in Florida, she knew that it was time the world focused on extreme heat brought on by climate change.

“Extreme heat is the number one climate-related killer, but it has been relatively under addressed. Now cities are beginning to take action on heat mitigation and management,” says Gilbert, in an email interview with Down To Earth (DTE). 

She plans to address the challenges posed by extreme heat in a more holistic manner, rather than just focusing on emergency response or mitigation strategies.

In less than a year since Gibert’s appointment, four more cities have followed. In July 2021, Athens, the capital of Greece, named its former deputy mayor Eleni Myrivili as chief heat officer.

In October, Phoenix city in Arizona, US, and Freetown in Sierra Leone, Africa, named their chief heat officers. On March 3, 2022, Santiago, the capital of Chile, appointed urban planner Cristina Huidobro as the world’s fifth chief heat officer. Los Angeles in California, US, has also advertised a vacancy for the role.

The new-found urgency with which cities are hiring heat officers reflects a reckoning on heat unfolding across the world. Heatwaves claimed over 166,000 lives between 1998 and 2017, according to the World Health Organization.

The human cost is bound to increase as the incidence and intensity of heatwaves are on the rise. The Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on February 27, 2022, states that 33 per cent of the world’s population is already exposed to heat stress.

This could increase to 48-76 per cent of the population by the 2100. “We know the Earth is warming and that cities are heating up faster than peri-urban areas. We have reported up to a 10 degrees Celsius (°C) difference in daytime temperatures and a 5°C difference at night between Athens and peri-urban areas. Even within the city, we have measured substantial temperature differences,” says Myrivili, over a video interview, with DTE.

Uncertain times

“A chief heat officer wakes up every morning worrying about the heat going up because of global warming, and worrying about the fact that cities are not really taking it seriously enough,” says Myrivili.

Almost all the chief heat officers took up their new roles just when their cities faced the worst heatwave in decades. The delay in response and a lack of communication, they say, present a grim picture of the preparedness of both policymakers and the public.

Therefore, they have identified spreading aware-ness on the risks of extreme heat as a key part of their jobs.

Gilbert has begun raising public awareness through social and traditional media messaging. She has put up multilingual posters in public spaces, and the introduction of educational programmes in summer camps.

In Athens, Myrivili attempts to categorise heatwaves on the basis of health impacts. This would help people understand the danger that is looming while enabling decision-makers to trigger policies that would better protect them, she says. The city has also launched EXTREMA Global, a mobile application that allows users to assess heat-health risks in real time.

Freetown chief heat officer Eugenia Kargbo is developing a heat plan for the city. She works with stakeholders to implement adaptive measures to reduce heat stress and urban heat island effect. Her immediate challenge is to collect comprehensive heat data.

“We do not have a definitive baseline in terms of temperatures and vulnerable locations in the city, which are crucial for policy intervention,” says Kargbo, in an email interview with DTE.

Inclusive plans

The heat officers, through their initiatives, plan to safeguard the most vulnerable population. While most extreme weather events lead to the destruction of property and physical spaces, heatwaves directly impact the human body.

“The blood circulation gets deregulated at high temperatures, and it affects the functioning of different organs. High temperatures during the nighttime mean loss of sleep and fatigue, which leads to workplace accidents,” says Myrivili.

She says almost a quarter of the population cannot afford air conditioning and other cooling alternatives. “The worst affected are the old population and the poor,” she says, adding that the vulnerable population usually gets disoriented due to the lack of sleep and fatigue, which results in an increase in violence against women and children.

Myrivili’s medium-term plans focus on identifying and creating a network of vulnerable people and ensuring they have certain facilities such as consistent energy supply, so when the weather goes above a specific degree they do not have blackouts.

Gilbert is trying to find solutions to safeguard the health of the 30,000 outdoor workers in Miami, who suffer from chronic illnesses because of the extreme heat. She is sensitising residents of Miami-Dade County to garner support for the passing of a pending state legislation on the health of outdoor workers.

Three states in the US (Oregon, California, and Washington) have similar legislation that requires employers to provide training and education about ways to avoid heat-related illnesses and they also have provisions to provide water at the worksite and rest breaks when the mercury crosses safe thresholds.

She is also developing climate resilience hubs, where people can go if it is too hot. “It is a trusted place in a community where people can come to cool off, charge their phones, get services, and maybe have preparedness training and learn about energy efficiency,” she says.

Miami already has cooling centres in parks and libraries, but they do not always have backup power if there is widespread power loss. With just one hub currently designated, opening more “is our first priority,” Gilbert says.

The overall challenge is that extreme heat is both a shock and a stress. While, on the one hand, it claims a lot of lives every year, the excessive use of air conditioning is leading to substantial greenhouse gas emissions that are only aggravating the climate crisis.

This was first published in the 1-15 April, 2022 edition of Down To Earth

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