Heat, Cities and Early Warnings: Acting on El Niño, Preparing for the Future | Goals Lounge

The science is clear. El Nino is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months with 90% certainty. The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is. El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world. Impacts will hit even harder, travel even further, and cross borders with devastating speed. The only effective response is climate action equal to the crisis. Ending the addiction to fossil fuels, accelerating the shift to renewables, protecting the most vulnerable, and delivering early warning systems for all.

Hi, everyone. On behalf of the United Nations Office for Partnerships, I am very happy to welcome you to Goals Lounge. And today's very important conversation about heat, cities, and early warnings, acting on El Nino, preparing for the future. Today's discussion, as the Secretary General highlighted, exactly why partnerships matter. As climate risks become more severe and more interconnected, no single institution can address them alone. For several years, the UN Office for Partnerships has been, has the great privilege of working closely with the World Meteorological Organization, UN Habitat, and many other partners in support of the Secretary General's Early Warnings for All initiatives. This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that everyone everywhere is protected by life saving early warning systems and that forecasts are translated into action that helps communities prepare, adapt and build resilience. We've also seen the power of innovative partnerships through initiatives supported by the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships, including our collaboration with Google and the Food and Agriculture Organization to strengthen efforts to predict, monitor, and respond to forest fires. These partnerships demonstrate how combining UN expertise with technology, data, and innovative financing can help address some of the most pressing climate challenges of our time. Goals Lounge was indeed created as a pace to showcase and inspire these kinds of solutions. We are grateful to all of you for joining us today and for your commitment to advancing very practical, very scalable responses to climate challenges facing cities and communities around the world. Now, it's my great pleasure to invite our moderator, Mohamed Lila, to the stage. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Anne-Marie, for the lovely introduction. Thank you to the entire Goals Lounge team that has organized this. But most importantly, thank you to each and every one of you. All of you made a choice today. Someone told me that UNGA, if you're interested in public policy and global issues, is like a child in a candy store. There's so much going on, there's so many different events that you can easily lose track. And all of you made a choice today to be here and spend your time here talking about and learning about an issue that's critical. And you chose to spend your time here because you care. So thank you all of you for being here. My name is Mohammed Lila, as you mentioned, and the title of the session is Heat, Cities, and Early Warnings, Acting on El Nino, Preparing for the Future. And to help us set the stage. Please join me in welcoming Ana Claudia Rossbach, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-Habitat. So there's a lot we're going to talk about in this session, but we want you to help set the stage with a very broad question that can kick off this overall discussion. We're talking about heat, cities, and early warning. Why is this so important now at this moment in history?

Well, it's critical because first of all, we have half of the population living in cities, right? And we are at a turning point. In 20 years, we are gonna have 70% of the population living in cities. On top of that, Mohamed, we are facing a global housing crisis. So at this point, we have 3 billion people living in homes that are not adequate. We have 300 million living homeless. and 1 billion living in informal settlements. In a context where the climate is changing and we have all sorts of events affecting people living more and more in cities, and especially looking at those living in informal settlements, the most vulnerable situation, they are the ones who are contributing less, but suffering more. So temperatures are rising, the sea level is rising, right? And all these communities, towns, cities are at very, very serious risk. So we have to tackle all these crises at the same time. And then at the end of the day, it's at home where you have to feel safe and should be actually protected, right? And this is what we have to adjust, considering what's happening in the planet in terms of the frequency and the intensity of events that are taking place right now.

You know, as you were listing all of the reasons why the world should be concerned, I was trying to make a mental map in my head, okay, this caused this, caused this issue, this is something where so many things converge at the same time. You know, people who are under-housed or homeless or people who have inadequate housing, climate, like the economy, finance, philanthropy, all of these things are sort of tied in. I want to hold this thought. You helped us set the stage. I want to take a moment to invite two of our other speakers onto the stage right now. And we'll come back to you in like 10 or 15 minutes to continue this conversation. But please join me in welcoming Celeste Salo, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization. And Agostino Moreira Sousa, head of Extreme Events and Health Protection at the UK Health Security Agency. So many of the people in the audience are well versed on what El Nino is, but this is also going out to the broader community through live casting and through UN Web TV and other places. There may be people right now who are going to ask a very simple question, and I want to start with the simplest question possible. What is El Nino and why should people care? Open it up.

So I can start with that explanation. El Nino is a phenomenon that occurs in the oceans. And we can check that by measuring what is happening with the sea surface temperatures in the Pacific. So it starts to heat above normal. And it starts to heat and to heat and to heat. And then when it reaches a threshold, we start to get worried about El Nino. So it is warmer water than usual in the equatorial Pacific. And that drives the whole global circulation and affects weather patterns across the whole world.

How big a scale is this? Just paint a picture for me in terms of, you know, is this just a case of a mild inconvenience or is this a critical situation that people, for example, in coastal cities or other places should be very concerned about?

I would say that El Nino, what drives is the possibility to have above normal rainfall patterns or below normal rainfall patterns in many areas of the world and above normal temperatures situation. So it's heating conditions, but that will affect mostly, I would say, not that much the polar regions, but certainly the places where most of us live. So it's around 40 degrees north and 40 degrees south where we can expect some kind of impact due to El Nino.

So this is the billion dollar, trillion dollar question, in fact. How should countries, communities, businesses, stakeholders across really all sectors of society be preparing for this? It's a very open question. It's a trillion dollar question if we could ever resolve this, but what are some of the ideas and what are some of the ways that community should be preparing for this? Who wants to take that?

I can take that one. I think there is one component of helping that is also the impact. It's not only the meteorological side of things, it's exactly what are the consequences on infrastructure, on health, on people. And I think one of the really good things on, meteorological and health partnership is that we know in advance that this is already happening and we can work with our communities to really anticipate the risks. What may happen in two, three months? How can we work together as a community to really ensure that, for example, the heat risks in the south, people prepare to those, but also going a bit deeper. If there are those impacts on those regions, what can be other unforeseen impacts on regions that may not be impacted? What are the consequences in terms of food security, migration, pandemics? And there's all of these need for preparedness and anticipation. So if there is any emergency, health or meteorological, at least we are prepared. What does that preparation look like?

I think there are two levels, right? So you have to look at the emergency, the urgency, and see what you can do like yesterday or today, right? And there are a couple of measures in terms of, you know, forecast and so on. I think getting communities informed and organized is fundamental, fundamental, because a lot is being done at the level of the communities, right? Especially in the global south, in these informal settlements I was talking about, but many cities, they don't, they lack capacity. to deal with that. So communities really need to be organized and be informed about what's going on. And there are several simple systems that have been implemented throughout the history. And today we have WhatsApp, we have internet, it's easier to communicate, right? But we cannot lose the kind of the long term vision. And in here is where, you know, work around cities, making cities friendlier for this, what's coming. And also, housing is fundamental. At the short, medium term, you can work in cities, make cities more green, make cities more blue. You can work around improving the public green spaces in cities, water surfaces, and so on. But the structural issue about housing and how to deal with this 1 billion people that are living in informal settlements, this is critical and this is not short term. This requires investments, this requires strategic planning, mapping, having data, having information about how people live. So this is a kind of long term. And then you have the existing environment. People are already living in houses that are not safe for flooding, not adequate for heat waves. So you have to convert the built environment. So converting the built environment, addressing the issues of people living in informal settlements in risk areas. These are the kind of more structural issues that we have to observe and address at the long term.

So I like the thinking between short term and long term because When you look at the way cities are planned, they're never planned for what can we do next year. It's planned for how do we create sectors of the city and how do we create work-life balance and how do we create a city that functions with infrastructure. These are sometimes done on a scale of several decades long. That's all well and good because maybe there might be several decades, but what are some of the short-term solutions here that communities and cities need to be exploring so that when catastrophes hit, they're ready for it now?

Well, in my perspective, I would like to add to what our colleague said, that when you are exposed to extreme weather or extreme phenomena, there are three elements I would like to mention that we need to be very well prepared for. First, at what threshold you are going to put an action. It's not the same for a city in India or a city in Europe or a city in South America. It's not the same. So what will be your threshold to react? First. Second, who will take action? Because that speaks about the governance of the system, the coordination that Ana Claudia was mentioning. And third. who are the most vulnerable, who you should go first, because sometimes you don't have the capacity to cover everything. But if you detect people that maybe the elder, kids, schools, health, so you target some sectors and you get prepared for those first. I think that those are very practical questions and issues that we need to address collectively through the different perspectives that in urban environments, this is even more important.

Can I jump in?

Yeah, of course.

I think I will provide a global example and a national example of things being done. So Celeste, I know that you are a great advocate to the Global Health Information Network, that is a group of partners that are really exploring these solutions in terms of evidence, guidance, planning, that is very specific to each specific context. So we don't have this kind of a single plan for every country. No, we need to understand that context and there is a lot of work being done. So we can have those actions at short, medium, long term. But using the example of what is happening in England, there is also the need for partnership at the national level. They said in the session, we have these early warnings. So how do we inform people in advance? that they need to take action. And here's where the meteorological agency and the public health agency comes together. So in our case, it's the UK Health Security Agency and the Met Office. So the Met Office provides us with a reliable forecast about possible impacts. We make a joint decision based on possible impacts that we can see after that forecast, and then we issue an alert. so the people can take action considering the alert that is being issued. And it's not only the people, it's the health and social care sectors, it's the infrastructure sectors, it's all of society can start to take action when they receive the information well in advance so it doesn't come as a surprise.

So I want to drill down on the importance of partnerships here because one of the questions that you had was who takes the action, right? I think the need and the urgency is there, who it affects is there, who takes the action? Now, if any of you have grown up in a typical North American city, you know how long it takes to get anything done. It can take weeks For a city crew to fill a single pothole, in most major North American cities, just filling a single pothole requires different agencies and different groups. And it can start with a phone call. Now, we're not talking about a single pothole here. We're talking about something that's on a global scale. And when you talk about, for example, bringing health partners to the table and meteorologists to the table and other stakeholders to the table. I have to ask, how hard is it to get people together to collaborate and cooperate on this? And you have some experience in this?

I have experience. Trust and not forgetting that institutions are also people and people that work together and throughout the year for capacity building events, through networks, really knowing that in the moment that is really important that decisions need to be made, we call it like no regrets approach, that if the decisions need to be made, they need to be made. And you're asking me is how the people like, how the people reacts. I will give the example of July 2022. England never saw temperatures of 40 degrees, so we were entering in uncharted territory. And when the decision needed to be made, I remember being in the same meeting with Will Lang that is from the Met Office, myself from the Health Agency, is it time to go? Is it time to issue the first red warning in England? It is time. And you say it's not only the warning, we already have prepared to that event several weeks in advance. There was already 15 days of preparation, of media engagement, of engagement with other governmental departments, with third sector, voluntary sector, with Red Cross. and the public trust on the institutions. I think it's quite fitting that is a discussion for the Goals Lounge because it's a lot about the trust, the institutions, really understanding how can we work together so when it matters the most, we're ready to act.

I'm really glad you brought this up because one of the best things about the Goals Lounge is that it's very solution oriented. It's very, okay, we know what the problems are, but let's drill down on the solutions. Can I ask, if you wanna jump in, please go ahead.

Because I think first we saw, we have an experience. We saw during COVID how people came together to address the issue, right? And we succeeded. We, professionals exchanged information quite fast. Then a vaccine or vaccines were developed, right? At the level of communities, I mean, they organize themselves. The government wouldn't come into the informal settlements. They organized themselves, they created their own protocols and so on, and they needed to work with the governments, independent of the level of capacity to make sure that responses would react in time, make sure that some sort of minimal kind of social networking protection would take place. And the second thing is that also because what happened in Europe and everything, people are more mobilized. So I live in Kenya, in Nairobi. This is where UN-Habitat is located, our headquarters. Kenya faced floodings in 2024, around May 2024. So today, now I see how the population is more sensitized. So they are already waiting for El Nino, Celeste. I go to the supermarket and I talk to people and they talk to me, we are waiting for El Nino. I mean, their heads, they're waiting for El Nino. And of course, the governor should be here. He was planning to come to the event with mayors that we attended yesterday. They decided to stay back to prepare. So you see how people are more aware about what's going on. And this is positive for us because this lays the ground to create trust and so on. But we can do, we did that before.

So Celeste, what does a successful partnership look like from your perspective?

Certainly one that is built from trust, of course, collaboration and mutual understanding. And I would say what we call co-production. It is not about my idea of what the health sector needs. needs because my idea might be wrong. It's not my idea about what urban planner needs. It's about sitting together and recognizing what information I bring to this table, what information do you bring, and what's the issue we want to solve together. Sometimes we meteorologists are seeking for the perfect forecast. And then that perfect forecast is not the key issue. The key issue is No, no, no. In the health, I just need to know if we will go up beyond 32 or not. Well, that's far from a perfect forecast. That's easier. So and then we've been struggling to achieve those kind of threshold and targets. So it's about identifying the target for action. And this is, I think, the key aspect that I would like to point out. And working at the urban scale is not the same as the rural scale, but I would say from the geological point of view, it's just that notion of service, understanding that your products need to be usable, actionable. Otherwise, my explanation can be wonderful, my maps can be very nice colored, but nobody will take action, and that is not something that we can afford, not anymore.

I love the way that you were describing the system in England because the moment you say code red for anything, people understand that this is a serious issue. So sometimes it's just a question of how easily can you just convey this in a way that ordinary people take action. We're going to move on to the next segment in this, I would call it an episode because I come from television. But thank you so much, both of you, for coming and sharing your expertise and your time, and hopefully the audience here learned something that they can do as well. to help be part of the solution and not the problem. Let's give them a round of applause, please. There was a moment there where she talked about the divide between urban and rural and how doing something, for example, in a small area of India is done on a different scale and a different speed than a major North American city. Speaking of major North American cities, We want to turn to the implementation of things like resilient housing, local leadership, and I'm going to use the F word here. Finance to talk about how we can scale action. Ana Claudia is going to stay for the session, but please join me in welcoming Todd Gloria, the mayor of one of the nicest cities in North America, San Diego.

Thank you. Thank you. That's very generous. Thank you.

You were sitting just off stage and you were listening to the conversation. What stood out in your mind as we were talking?

Well, I'm grateful that we're even talking about this, you know, and El Nino, like literally like an hour ago, our governor in California has declared a state of emergency in preparation of El Nino. So this is real and I worry that folks are not paying attention to it. The conversation is very pertinent, very timely.

Has that ever been done before, a state of emergency in preparation for a climatological event?

I lived in California my entire life. I can't remember it. Maybe it did happen, but I think that it undoubtedly will help us capture people's attention and ask them to take the steps now, whether through facilitated action from government, the nonprofit or private sector, or just through their own auspices. When I think about the enormity of the challenge that my city is facing, and you very kindly described it in such a kind way, but let's be honest, We don't have experience with extreme weather in a place like San Diego. It's 72 degrees when it's not that people yell. Now I'm trying to say not only is it going to maybe be warm, but it also may be extremely wet and we're not a city that's built for that. So I'm grateful for everyone's attention and this platform to really communicate not just to my folks in San Diego, but really all around the planet. This is real, this is coming, and you need to take steps now to prepare.

This affects people who are underhoused, people who have no housing. who have inadequate housing. How would this affect a city like yours?

Well, it's already happening. We've had extended periods of high heat in San Diego, again, not built for it. And for our unhoused, what that's looked like is trying to bring them indoors into cool zones, literally extending the hours of our recreation centers and branch libraries in order to have them come off the streets and be into air conditioning. Again, we just don't have an experience with this, so it's fairly informal. What that looks like going forward, you might appreciate the fact that the shelters that we have for our unhoused in our city are in places that are not high value land areas, areas that are in flood zones. And so one of the things I'm having to take consider now is that all the shelter expansions that we've done in order to get more people off the streets actually has placed them in places of vulnerability. And so we're having contingency plans about where we would relocate those shelters, potentially on a proactive basis in order to make sure that any rain event will not flood these shelters. It's an interesting juxtaposition of the places where people are most willing to accept these shelters are the places that that are most vulnerable to flooding.

Yeah, I wanna ask you a question. And again, there are gonna be people out there that are hearing some of this terminology for the first time. And it's a new conversation in large parts of North America. So I don't think San Diego is exceptional in that way. These are things a lot of cities are sort of grappling with right now. What does climate resilient housing even look like? Like what goes into being able to say, look, when we're planning a new subdivision, when we're planning new redevelopment, climate resilient housing has never been top of mind because like you said, 72 degrees, what's a bad day? 80, 85? It's a new conversation. What does that look like, climate resilient housing?

Yeah, and this is precisely the conversation that we are having now with member states, literally, right? So we do have this open-ended working group on housing. And now in November, the idea is really that member states agree on some policy recommendations to precisely this thematic of climate resilient housing. But I say it start with location and if we look you know we were just together in in July here talking about sdg 11 and we are as at the the goals launch sdg 11 talks about housing but talks also about Urban expansion and the way we are growing and the patterns of urbanization. We have 2 billion people coming to cities in Africa and Southeast Asia. So we have to really be careful on how we grow horizontally versus the options that we have to go up. Because as cities sprawl more than population, more than it's needed, we are putting pressure, more and more pressure into natural resources. And this makes our situation, our society, even more fragmented and vulnerable to what's happening. Let's look at the fires in Los Angeles, close to your home, right? And vis-a-vis how the city developed. Flooding is the same thing, landslides and so on. So we have to be careful where we build to avoid this fragility, this vulnerability, this fragmentation. It's also more expensive and more difficult for you as a mayor, right, to respond in a city that is broad, vis-a-vis a city that is more compact. And the second thing is the quality of the buildings, right? Buildings, we spoke about heat, buildings that, and we have the pressure of climate change and emissions and so on. So cool and heat, how we can use architecture and design to play around cool and heat, avoiding or minimizing the need for AC, minimizing the the need for heating our houses, right? Houses that are solid. We spoke about informal settlements, building materials that are solid. So it's about location, it's about how we shape the houses and about having robust houses.

Todd, I'm gonna ask you a question that you've probably been asked by many local reporters in San Diego. Where's the money for all this gonna come from?

Bake sales and car washes, I mean, it can't, I mean, sadly, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I've been flipping, you know, you, you, you laugh to not cry, right? I mean, because this is a time where cities are experiencing extreme financial challenges. Right. Right? Uh, times of higher costs, which are impacting literally all of us. People don't always think about that high gas price is also paid for by cities, right? And we have fire engines and trash trucks and they get really poor gas mileage, right? So at a time when all of our costs are going up, we have for our daily operations, these, uh, unexpected costs of emergencies and of disasters. And I mean, it is horrific. That's a must be done. You have a flood, you have to respond and we'll do that work. It's what I worry about is that we never get ahead to some of that preventative or proactive work. Like how do you raise the dam so they can hold more water? How do you expand the channels in order to accommodate 100 year storm and not a 50 year storm? Those are uncompensated costs, particularly in this environment where things are getting more expensive, and also in this environment with more political polarization and the inability to act. There's no white knights coming from Washington, DC to save cities like mine. We have to do it on our own. But that political polarization means that in an environment, as we have in California, where new revenue is only possible with the vote of the people, the lack of trust in institutions and political polarization means that we can't get money from the people, we won't get it from Washington, so where are we gonna get it? We have to start getting creative.

How would a national strategy or a national coordination effort help you as the mayor of a major city? Because as the mayor of a major city, there's always financial crunch, there's always getting people to understand, there's always, well, don't raise my property taxes. There's all sorts of things, right? How much would having a top-down approach help you to deal with some of these issues?

One thing I've known for my entire career in public service is the easiest way to get someone to want to do something is tell them another community is doing it. Austin already perfected this. They're doing this in Portland. You should see what they're doing in Denver. This is often a way that allows the public to see it and believe that it's possible. So to your question, if I say to San Diegans, we need to make a massive investment in our stormwater infrastructure. They might be like, no one else is doing it, so why should we have to do it? When you see a collective action, suddenly people start to understand, we have to do our part as well. There's a lot of skepticism about getting out in front of something. I'm not one of those people, but by and large, the folks I work for feel that way. It would be extremely helpful to see it as a part of an international or national effort to say, we're all doing this because we will all be impacted by it.

I think back to, unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina. When Hurricane Katrina happened, and it caused so much devastation, there was a movement afterwards that lasted several years where cities got together and they said, we cannot let this happen again. It was a conscious effort. There was at all levels of government and everybody said what happened could have been prevented with the right planning, with the right housing, with the right zoning, all of those things, with the right dams and levees and stuff. Hopefully it won't take a tragedy for partnerships to develop between different levels of government, stakeholders, philanthropists, NGOs, you name it. Let's talk about the information side of things, because there's the policy side, there's like the implementation, the development side, but then there's also just letting people know that this is actually a serious issue that requires attention. What's the answer here? How do you get people to care about this?

Well, I agree with you because these disasters, they happen and I spoke about COVID and then people forget it. Right. So I think it's very important to, the local action is fundamental. the role of the mayor. I mean, having national strategies is extremely important because you need the resources, you need the regulatory framework, a lot we need to change. The systems are not working, bottom line, but the local action is very important. And mayors, they have much more proximity to communities, right? So I believe really working with NGOs, with the organized civil society, community-based organizations, universities, the role of the media is fundamental in that sense. And today we have social media that can, you know, play a positive role in that case because information gets earlier. I spoke before about the communities that have organized the role of women leading communities actually and sharing information. I think cities need to have a strong strategy to communicate and the local level is the most adequate to get to the population, to get to the communities.

Todd, I don't have a magic wand. I did, I'd give it to you.

I would use it. Thank you.

You'd use it. But if we had this hypothetical magic wand that we could give you and we could say, okay, we've identified what this problem is, as a city that's gonna be on the front lines of some of these changes that are taking place, what would you change? And be as optimistic as you can here. There's no limit.

I think it's challenging to get people in their day-to-day grind to understand larger contexts that are happening, right? And I think it is true, and Claudia was talking about wildfires. One of the things that has been blessed in our city is that we had horrible wildfires in 2003 and 2007. And what happened after that, it's always a reaction, it's unfortunately never proactive, is that we made significant changes to our rates and we have made massive investments to the point that we have not had a major wildfire in Mount Carmel of that kind since then. People have forgotten, right? And they are upset about the utility rates and I understand why. However, that has meant that we have not had thousands of homes burned down like we did in 2003 and 2007. I wish magic wand that we didn't have to have such destruction and death in order to get the will to do stuff. And often it's a matter of me saying, as you mentioned, as a mayor, like this is a problem, I've identified it, here's the solution. Let's go. But it shouldn't have to take a major disaster, a tremendous tragedy in order to get folks to mobilize. So the magic wand would be that we are able to have the space and capacity to anticipate and act rather than to just react.

What's the key to unlocking the proactiveness of this, though? Because part of what you're saying is human nature.

Yes.

Tragedies happen. We recover. 20 years later, we forget about it. Same tragedy happens. That's just human history, right? But what's the secret here to unlocking the proactiveness? side of things where you're saying, okay, we cannot forget and we have to keep this on our radar because it's sort of like an ongoing threat.

I think there has to be a commitment to the same truth. And the trust in institutions is so low currently that you can be a position of responsibility and explain something, and yet people still don't believe it, or they'll find an alternative fact somewhere to convince them that the thing that's uncomfortable for them is not true. So it starts with some level of belief in institutions, and that's why I'm grateful to be here, to have an institution that is saying, this is a thing. It does start with that platform. But I struggled in this environment. It's not just the human nature part. It's the fact that you can find something somewhere else to tell you that what you know to be true is not true. That's what I struggle with right now. And I feel like that's somehow different than in the past. I feel like previously when you'd have a natural disaster, it was not the blame of elected officials. My colleague in Los Angeles is somehow to blame for wildfires. That is absolutely not true. But when it becomes about who you can blame, then it becomes that it's not your problem to solve. And that's where or this current environment we find ourselves in is really challenging in this context. Obviously, people talked about whether they believe in climate change. It's not something to believe. It is a fact that is happening. But certainly, people find alternative facts to go convince them that they don't have to take that action today. Okay.

So, you said the magic word I was hoping you'd say, which was action. We've got about a minute left in this segment. I want you to each take 30 seconds, talk to the audience and talk to all the people around the world that might be watching this. What's something each and every one of us can do in this room to take action, to be part of the solution and not the problem?

Well, first of all, you mentioned information, right? Get informed. I think it's very important. Sometimes we are afraid to look for information because let's be honest, the context is very complicated, is very complex. And as you said, Sometimes we don't take action because we don't trust and the society is very, very polarized. So I think we still have to get information. I believe a lot in the young people. So I think young generations, they think differently. So perhaps engaging with young people and the youth and so on could be an alternative for different future for us.

Todd, I want you to have the last word just for this segment.

I would just say very quickly, in every incidence of disaster, you see people helping one another. My ask or my request to folks would be to help people now. If you're not worried about a heat emergency for yourself, consider your neighbor next door who may have no one else. Help them now. That becomes a force multiplier for people like me who in a disaster situation has to care about the most vulnerable. But if we can take care of each You don't have to believe in me, you don't have to believe in a political party or anything like that. You can just take care of your loved ones, your neighbors, your pets, whomever. That kind of proactive stance, I think people do care about individuals, and that's a place to harness some time and attention right now. Perfect.

We have such an interesting dynamic here because you have a local leader from an amazing city, and then you have the UN, which is just this massive, huge organization that has presence in literally every country in the world. Ana Claudia, I want you to have the last word here. Wrap up this segment with your final reflections.

Well, I think Celeste mentioned something which is very wise to me, and I've been pursuing in the work that we do at UN-Habitat. She said there's no perfect map, right? So we are talking about actions, about the ways we can share information, communicate with the society, get the society to work together. There's no single formula and there's no perfect action. We should do what we can do. And there are things that we can do today. We discussed a couple of things that we could today, help your neighbor today, look at the forecasts, reading the papers and so on. But we have to think about the future. We cannot stop in today. today is not enough for the future generation. So basically what I think we have to reflect based on all that is that we have to reset our minds, right? And think about cities in a different way, thinking about the roles that cities play for the development, for the challenges that we have in terms of climate in a different, it's a different world and we have to think differently, we have to reset and nothing is going to be perfect. We have to be progressive.

Perfect. Thank you both for sharing your time. Mayor, I know you're very busy. You probably have a lot of events this week with all the climate stuff going on in the city and also you, Anna Claudia, with literally UN General Assembly week with every world leader making their way in. Thank you to all of you in the audience and all of you viewing in online as well. This will be available on social media if you want to share this with your audience and your friends and your followers and your aunt who lives in a city that might be affected by this. If you're like me, you get WhatsApp messages from aunties around the world talking about how dangerous the world is. The hope is that everyone who is watching this today comes away with just one small thing. Really, one small action can create a movement. And you might think that what you're doing is insignificant, but it could just be a case of checking in on a neighbor, like you said, or just doing one thing that's proactive. So thank you to all of our guests today. Thank you to the UN Goals Lounge, and thank you to all of you who are here today for your presence and your time. Thank you.