Climate
How is the city of Paris adapting to climate change?
After a summer of searing heatwaves and droughts, the city of Paris is under pressure to revise and accelerate its much-touted plans to prepare the French capital for the challenges of global warming. FRANCE 24 takes a close look at the city’s efforts to go green.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, best known for her pledge to make Paris 100% bikeable, has made tackling climate change a top priority and is widely regarded as a vocal advocate of greening Europe’s capital cities. However, this past scorching summer has highlighted the need to accelerate efforts to make Paris more resistant to the effects of global warming.
The city of Paris has won plaudits for its Climate Action Plan, which aims to make the city carbon neutral by 2050. According to Vincent Viguié, a researcher in climate change economics at the Centre for International Research on Environment and Development (CIRED), the plan “places the city among the most active in the world on this subject, both in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the present and future impacts of climate change”.
But for Alexandre Florentin, a Paris councillor and member of the green party Génération écologie, the city’s administration must be careful not to rest on its laurels.
While Paris “was ahead of other cities” when it first published its Climate Action Plan, he says, it has since “fallen behind when it comes to the energy and climate crises”.
“The climate emergency doesn’t shape the rest of the city’s policy enough, when it should be driving it,” he says. For instance, “it’s great to build bicycle lanes, but we don’t think enough about the impact of mass tourism and aeroplanes. We need to do things in conjunction”.
Hidalgo’s green belt
The Paris Climate Action Plan was revised in June with the aim of accelerating the city’s ecological transition and ensuring it remains on track to meet targets set under the UN-backed Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. The idea was to focus on the specific needs of each Parisian arrondissement (district) and step up efforts to reduce inequalities that have been further exacerbated by climate change.
At the start of the year, the main environmental objectives listed on the City Hall’s website included making schools more accessible by foot, transforming playgrounds into “oases” and planting more than 22,000 trees to combat heatwaves and bolster biodiversity.
In May, Hidalgo announced that she wanted to transform the city’s 35 km-long périphérique (ring-road) from a “grey belt” into a “green belt” by planting a total of 70,000 trees and reducing the number of traffic lanes from 4 to 3. For 2024, when Paris is due to host the summer Olympics, Hidalgo has plans to create an “Olympic lane”, which will be designated for buses, taxes and carpooling for those participating in the Olympics. According to the mayor’s deputy, David Belliard, this would help reduce traffic by up to 80,000 vehicles.
The Paris mayor has also pledged to plant more than 170,000 trees in the city itself and expand its parks and gardens by 30 hectares by 2026.
