As temperatures in India break records, ancient terracotta air coolers are helping fight extreme heat

Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) in Oklahoma bring together landowners to share equipment, labor, and expertise needed to conduct prescribed burns. Early evidence of efficacy include restored native plants and improved land health, suggesting the model can help reverse woody encroachment and improve grassland and wildlife habitat on participating properties.

The creation of forest gardens—the modern term for an ancient agroforestry model that mixes shrubs, herbs, vines, fruit and nut trees, and perennial vegetables—are helping supply communities in sub-Saharan Africa with food, medicine, and animal feed. The U.S.-based NGO TREES claims to have created 38,000 active forest gardens in five countries, each comprising about 4,000 trees. This has restored 99,743 acres of degraded land, having reached 56,273 farmers and their families across 174 community projects.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe is in the middle of a multi-decade effort to restore an important wetland that will make the local environment more resilient to climate change. Using tribal knowledge and expertise, they’re encouraging beavers to return, reintroducing salmon, planting trees, and building connections between people and the land.

Innovators are developing new air conditioning units to keep people cool as temperatures and humidity rise without contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Alongside improved energy efficiency, the new tech focuses on sensing and reducing humidity in real-time and adjusting itself as humidity fluctuates throughout the day.

Frankfurt is changing the way it designs its buildings to adapt to extreme heat. The city works with urban climatology researchers to ensure new housing and skyscrapers won’t impact the wind corridors that keep residents cool, and it promotes practices like installing green roofs.

Medellín, Colombia, is combating the urban heat island effect by creating green corridors across the city. Over 2.5 million plants and trees were carefully selected to maximize impact and planted on buildings and along roads and waterways.

Virtual power plants are emerging in the United States and partnering with utility companies to manage energy demand during extreme weather and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These plants are actually a portfolio of energy resources, anything from smart appliances in homes to solar panels and electric vehicle infrastructure outside of homes, that are tracked and managed digitally. This enables virtual power plants to encourage minimal peak energy use, increase the amount of renewable energy sent back to the grid, and decrease the use of peaker power plants that rely on fossil fuels.

Architects in China are drawing inspiration from the ancient practice of building skywells, and restoring old ones, as a low-carbon way to keep homes cool in modern times. Skywells are rectangular tunnels in the middle of a building that function similarly to a chimney, allowing cool air from outside to flow in and push the warmer air out.

A collaboration between tree-planting organizations in Washington D.C. helps Catholic church properties to plant and care for trees. The free trees are an effort to combat urban heat and benefit the local environment.

A global movement to localize the construction process, and design buildings for the climate they reside in, is bringing back practices like green roofs and using natural materials like mud and salt to keep people cool as the planet warms.