MCAP at Climate Week: Extreme Heat Roundtable Recap

During Climate Week NYC on September 24, the Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership (MCAP) and the Under2 Coalition convened government leaders, technology entities, and cutting edge researchers from academia to explore how they can work together to move beyond one-off interventions and actually get ahead of the health and economic impacts.  

Extreme heat is one of the defining climate challenges of our time with frontline governments at the state and regional level facing escalating impacts on public health, infrastructure, energy systems, water resources, labour productivity and economic competitiveness. Under 2 and MCAP are both focused on advancing climate adaptation practice with the 183 government partners we serve–all of whom are facing new problems and higher intensities every summer with extreme heat.

The global heat emergency transcends borders and increasingly impacts the lives of everyday people worldwide. This summer in Spain, more than 5,000 people lost their lives to heat-related illnesses. Continuously record-breaking heat also causes severe economic losses, with the European Union GDP estimating a loss of €200 billion. To make matters worse, these challenges now extend beyond a seasonal emergency with climate change causing hotter temperatures for longer stretches of the year. Together, these factors signal an urgent need for investment to support the rapidly emerging policy and technology that can provide solutions to heat, alongside the development of enabling governance mechanisms that move beyond pilots and allow for wider scaling and adoption. 

https://www.medclimate.org/mcap-leadership from the California Natural Resources Agency acknowledged the growing ecosystem of technologies, but emphasized the disconnect of solutions reaching the necessary scale to protect people and economies, and the need for more innovative collaboration leading to meaningful action. Sonsoles Letang, Director General for Climate Change and Environmental Quality in Catalonia, described the development of their Heat Action plan, which took inspiration from the CalHeat Score and Santiago Warning System, but recognized many places are behind. Organizations like the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) shared ideas that focused on easy implementable technologies and case studies for the government successfully adopting them on a wider scale. 

All of these different actors are working to respond to the urgent challenges of extreme heat, but a significant opportunity for more dynamic collaboration remains. The discussion concluded with a call to action, especially to these external organizations to continue their great work and encouraged using this meeting as a launch point to build tangible partnerships with MCAP and Under2 governments. 

Meaningful action requires rethinking multi-sector partnerships – nonprofit, government, philanthropy, and corporate entities – to move beyond piloting solutions toward comprehensive heat resilience responses that save lives and ensure a liveable future for all.