Opening Plenary – keynotes

Welcome from Nicola Mathers, Future of London

Future of London’s members and partners chose climate resilience and equity as 2024 conference topic because it is the major challenge of our generation.

Climate change is on a trajectory to hit us unequally. Climate-vulnerable groups will disproportionately bear the impact of extreme weather events. We know these groups include older people, younger people from black and minority ethnic groups, people on low incomes and people with underlying health issues.

What must the built environment sector do to support those who are most vulnerable? And how can we empower Londoners through climate resilience and bring them on this journey?

Future of London brought together its cross-sector network today to share creative, smart and equitable solutions for climate resilience.

Speakers

• Nicola Mathers, CEO, Future of London (Chair)
• Mete Coban MBE, Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, Greater London Authority
• Emma Howard Boyd CBE, Chair, London Climate Resilience Review
• Indy Johar, Co-founder, Dark Matter Labs

Mete Coban, Greater London Authority

Mete is Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy. While he spoke at the conference before he’d been in post for 100 days, he’s been able to hit the ground running on resilience thanks to the GLA’s recent London Climate Resilience Review. Mete has a decade of experience working as a councillor for Hackney Council including as the council lead on environment and transport.

The mayor’s office believes that climate resilience is key issue for social and racial justice.

London’s best examples of climate resilience have happened when we’ve co-created solutions with communities and leveraged multi-stakeholder investment. How can the built environment sector work differently to do more of this?

• We didn’t know it growing up, Mete said, but my community was impacted by climate change. Extreme heat has been a real issue for working class families. And there’s a risk that emissions targets for 2030 will push people working in trades out of work, such as cabdrivers.
• Climate resilience is key to economic growth in London. We need to approach climate action with an opportunity-driven mindset to tap into this growth.
• Resilience has the potential to create opportunities for residents across London through jobs, skills and wellbeing. Newham Council’s co-created Just Transition Plan is an example of how this can be done well and meet the needs of people from global majority backgrounds.
• Looking forward, we need to think more broadly about what a ‘green’ job is. Green jobs must be embedded across the built environment sector. And people from all backgrounds need to be encouraged to get excited about these.

“We’re not just doing this because it’s the right thing to do. Climate resilience can unlock so many opportunities across the whole city. Our focus now is: how do we create a shared sense of London mission, where residents feel they have a role to play?”

Emma Howard Boyd CBE, London Climate Resilience Review

Emma Howard Boyd chaired the 2024 London Climate Resilience Review. This independent report was commissioned by the Mayor of London to take stock of London’s preparations for climate change.

There are extreme climate emergencies happening right now across the world. We’re seeing mass evacuations in Florida after Hurricane Helene. This has a huge human cost: the meteorologist communicating the news was in tears because they couldn’t predict it. And climate disasters always hit the poor and the most vulnerable first.

Climate resilience is also a huge economic issue. Hurricane Helene has caused – conservatively – a $100 billion worth of damage.

In London, we need a vision that can inspire hope and support social justice through resilience. To do this, we need to channel money into local communities, Emma said.

• The London Climate Resilience Review sets out 50 recommendations for the capital. These include setting out a heat plan for authorities to action in heatwaves and creating a water reservoir.
• Public sector teams working on adaptation and resilience need to break out of their siloes and be heard across all central government missions. This means following where the money is – where new houses and infrastructure is being built – and making it clear that resilience is non-negotiable.
• Round Our Way is a charity working to report how climate change is felt across the country. For example, south-facing classrooms that were built decades ago are already getting too hot for children to concentrate.
• The past government quietly published a report on working with citizens to build climate resilience. It showed that many people are angry that they weren’t more aware of some of the risks they face, from extreme to heat, to flooding, water shortage and wildfires. The general public has a real thirst for honesty about where we are.

“Local authorities are leading on the climate resilience agenda, but so much more needs to happen. It’s essential that all the different local authorities in London work together. It’s making sure that we’re looking at carbon reductions alongside resilience, but also understanding that what happens in one part of London will have a direct impact somewhere far away in London.” – Emma Howard Boyd

Indy Johar, Dark Matter Labs

Indy Johar is co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, a think-tank designing infrastructure for a caring and sustainable future.

Indy worries we are living delusionally in our conversations on climate. Engaging honestly with where we are will change how we deal with spatial justice and build infrastructure for transition.

The science says we are heading for a three-degree global average increase. This means a five-degree increase on land, and eight in urban environments. We’re in an existential crisis that will get worse year on year.

We’re now in a scenario where the world will become increasingly volatile. Resilience means ensuring stability, because if we lose stability, we lose our pathway to mitigation.

But we are still talking like it’s 2010 and we’re choosing a green future.

• Societal breakdown will come before the worst temperature change. The Arab Spring is an example of this. It was driven by heat fires in Moscow, which stopped the movement of fertilizers around the world, inflating food prices.
• The language that reflects our situation is ‘existential security’: the world will become increasingly volatile as it’s hit by a series of shocks. As volatility increases, wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few.
• Climate resilience finance is in its infancy, because we don’t have the structured financial economy to pool and calculate collective risk. We need a security economics that values the stability of the UK as a key asset.
• For years, we’ve spoken about the promise of fabric-first retrofit. But where was our local material supply? Our labour supply? If our solution is structural timber, London should build a forest belt.
• The UK doesn’t have the carbon budget to build the homes we have promised. London’s current economy is only 3% circular. We are nowhere close to achieving what we need to. We need to be critical about the numbers we’re responding to, and design a material transformation of the economy from there.

“I’m not pointing out these problems because I think they’re insurmountable. I’m pointing them out because unless we engage with the promised case as it is, our solutions will be largely illusions. They’ll be convenient politics.”

Indy made the following calls to action:

• The UK treasury needs to acknowledge the scale of GDP at risk. It must lead an almost warlike transition to a different economy, where risk is priced into our assets, and we’re able to invest and mitigate against those pooled risks.
• There’s a need for micro-local boroughs to enable deep resident participation. And there’s a need to consolidate governance at the Greater London Authority level. These two functions – a participatory democracy, and a powerful representative democracy – must have the power to construct markets.
• Public-Private Partnerships have failed – let’s move beyond these. There’s a strategic opportunity to develop a new class of coordination needed to orchestrate resilience at scale. This means many to many agreements, between 80-90 collaborators at a time.

Conference session write-ups

Keynotes: Mete Coban (Deputy Mayor), Emma Howard Boyd (London Climate Resilience Review), Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs)

Fresh Perspectives – Young people-led panel discussion

Fresh Perspectives – Two US projects using art and culture to explore climate resilience

Including All Voices – ensuring communities are fully involved

Neighbourhood Futures – Tackling climate resilience and health equity

Homes and Buildings – Designing inclusive climate approaches

Council-led Housing Network – climate resilience through council development

Fresh Perspectives – Alumni ideas on climate resilience, plus domestic retrofit and infrastructure innovation in Arnhem

Inclusive Finance – Financial models for equitable climate resilience

Neighbourhoods – Designing inclusive climate approaches

Health and Racial Equity – Developing community-led action for ethnic minority communities

Make It Happen – Closing plenary with conference takeaways, including governance, finance and partnerships

Strand Aldwych Walking Tour – how a striking new landscape was created in the historic London

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The conference is part of our major Knowledge programme for 2024/25, with a final report in Spring 2025. Find out more about our Climate Resilience and Equity programme.

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