Ana Terra Amorim-Maia, guest expert at the C40 ICA Academy in Barcelona
Ana Terra Amorim-Maia, researcher at ICTA-UAB, was one of the experts invited to participate in the C40 ICA Academy, an event led by Barcelona in which a group of 6 cities (Warsaw, Seattle, Paris, London, Buenos Aires and Salvador de Bahia) delved deeper into the current challenges facing cities and share Barcelona’s best practices.
C40 is a network made up of close to 100 cities focusing on the fight against climate change
During the C40 Inclusive Climate Action (ICA) Academy, representatives from different cities exchanged experiences on the fight against energy poverty, the participation of vulnerable groups in a just energy transition and the building of community resilience to extreme temperatures.
In the talk, Ana Terra Amorim-Maia presented her framework for Intersectional Climate Justice, detailing five actions that cities can take to adapt to climate change in more socially transformative ways and illustrating them with examples from Barcelona.
Ana also talked about her current research on climate shelters (refugis climàtics) and to what degree they are addressing the needs of Barcelona’s most vulnerable groups vis-a-vis extreme heat.
Throughout the sessions, the cities' representatives took the opportunity to see at first hand the projects and programmes that Barcelona had implemented, such as the network of climate-shelter spaces, or the work being carried out with professionals from the home-care service and with the Energy Advice Points.
Participants left this Academy inspired with new ideas on their abilities and roles when it came to developing fair local-level energy transitions and helping to build the resilience of their communities to crises.
C40 is a network made up of close to 100 cities focusing on the fight against climate change and on running urban initiatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks and improve the health, well-being and economic opportunities of city residents.
C40’s member cities represent 700 million people and a quarter of the world’s economy. Barcelona’s leadership in the face of the climate crisis was confirmed with this appointed, which strengthened the Catalan capital’s international role. The mayors of C40 Cities have been showing their determination, through collaboration and innovation, to comply with the Paris Agreement signed up to by States in 2015: to limit the planet’s global working and build healthy, fair and more resilient communities.