from ethnic or religious minorities (Pearson et al. 2017; Illingworth et al. 2018) may all face barriers in accessing relevant information about climate change, pollution or other environmental stressors, and may lack the resources to take the necessary coping or adaptation measures. Women may face a disproportionate care burden (Chauhan and Kumar 2016) that threatens their potential to earn income, while home-based workers may face a double impact if their homes and assets are damaged or destroyed by environmental hazards (Alber, Cahoon and Röhr 2017). When extreme events brought on by changes to the climate cause damage to assets and property, people without disaster insurance and tenure security are most vulnerable: they may be unable to recover lost assets, which can in turn affect their livelihoods, and they may be threatened by eviction as governments designate no-build zones in hazardous areas (Satterthwaite et al. 2020).
Other environmental challenges in urban contexts, such as water contamination, air pollution and noise, will disproportionately impact poorer population groups who cannot afford improved housing conditions, cleaner household fuels, protective equipment such as air purifiers, water treatment measures or other essential risk-reducing services (Mguni et al. 2020). In all cases of ill health brought on by environmental changes, women will face a caring burden, affecting their own livelihood prospects (UNEP 2016b). Where clean water or fuels are unreliable or difficult to source, the burden again often falls on women or young children, impacting their education prospects and health (OECD 2008; Ortiz-Correa, Resende Filho and Dinar 2016; WHO 2016b). Urban residents are disproportionately exposed to heat, due to the urban heat island effect (Heaviside, Macintyre and Vardoulakis 2017), and the effect tends to be worse in lower-income neighbourhoods (Chakraborty et al. 2019). Exposure to pollution in air, water and soils is associated with increased cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, neurological damage and cancer. Non- communicable diseases, including diabetes, cancers and cardiovascular diseases, linked to unhealthy diets, sedentary lifestyles and environmental pollution, are also more prevalent (The Lancet 2012). Finally, the transmissibility of infectious diseases is higher in overcrowded, frequently informal urban environments, presenting a challenge for public health services and exacerbating existing socioeconomic and health inequalities.
While rising standards of living and better disaster risk management appear to be reducing loss of life from extreme flood events (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2019), the number of people exposed to extreme weather events has risen (Pahl-Wostl 2015). While the global economic and infrastructure damage to cities from disasters is difficult to assess due to a lack of reliable data, it has been suggested that the magnitude of financial losses is increasing faster than the number of events and the impacts are not equally distributed (Pahl-Wostl 2015). Asian cities typically suffer the most casualties, while North American cities have the highest economic losses, possibly due to the concentration of resource-intensive infrastructure (MunichRe n.d.). The magnitude of reported economic
losses does not necessarily reflect the significance of the losses for certain groups within the city, particularly women and children working in the informal and care economies and home-based workers.
Atmospheric pollution has a major impact on cities. For example, increased emissions of greenhouse gases, other pollutants and anthropogenic heat into the atmosphere have implications for urban residents, such as higher temperatures, increased droughts and floods and rising sea levels in coastal cities. The quality of housing and access to cooling systems depends on their affordability and groups like elderly people are particularly vulnerable to exposure to high temperatures at night (Murage, Hajat and Kovats 2017). Exposure to air pollution, both indoors and outdoors, accounts for about one in nine deaths (over 7 million in total) every year worldwide (WHO 2020a), most of which are attributed to air pollution in cities. Long-term exposure to air pollution shortens lifespans (Pope, Ezzati and Dockery 2009; Lelieveld et al. 2015), increases the mortality of COVID-19 (Coker et al. 2020), affects children’s brain development (de Prado Bert et al. 2018) and reduces lung growth in children (Gauderman et al. 2015). Similarly, short-term exposure has been associated with higher daily mortality in cities (Liu et al. 2019) and exacerbated asthma in children (Bouazza et al. 2018). Higher temperatures, changing weather patterns (especially stagnation events) and less rainfall due to climate change all worsen air quality, increasing ground-level ozone and particulate matter concentrations (Fiore et al. 2012; von Schneidemesser et al. 2015). Climate change is also the underlying cause of the prolonged hot and dry conditions that increase the risk of sand and dust storms (WMO 2019b), wild fires and related smoke exposure in urban areas (Vardoulakis, Marks and Abramson 2020).
Almost half the human population directly depends on natural resources and biodiversity for their livelihoods and financial income, including many people classed as vulnerable (Convention on Biological Diversity 2016). Biodiversity loss affects urban residents by reducing many ecosystem services, including provisioning services (for example, food, medicines and fuel), regulating services (for example, clean water and air) and cultural services like recreation and spiritual fulfilment (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity 2011; Elmqvist et al. 2013; IPBES 2019). All urban dwellers remain heavily dependent on green and blue infrastructure and their connected biodiversity on account of their contributions to well-being. However, these are experiencing a reduction in terms of both quantity, quality and diversity, coupled with increased exposure to environmental risks, which will be exacerbated by climate change (IPBES 2019). Access to biological resources is currently uneven across different groups of people and the reduction in ecosystem services may intensify this situation, exacerbating environmental justice, gender and equity differences. The vulnerabilities of people and urban ecosystems are intertwined. For example, riverine ecosystems are vulnerable to changes in water flow, as well as human mismanagement (for example, the release of raw sewage or dredging). This creates vulnerabilities for people who depend on rivers for
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