By Dimitrije Martinovic
Dimitrije is a staff with FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE

Focus Media Arts Centre's series Climate Conversations, seeks to bring together compelling coverage of pertinent stories and issues related to climate change. In episode seven, RPTV reporters interviewed Inory Roy, Assicate Editor, The Local Magazine, a Toronto based publication focusing on social justice and long form reporting.

In her most recent article Inory Roy covered the phenomenon of Heatwaves, and in particular how heatwaves across Toronto have exposed the uneven distribution of heat across the city's various communities. The key to understanding the notion that there is an uneven distribution of heat across the city's neighbourhoods lies in the structural design of cities.

For example, “the people that live in the most poorly designed neighbourhoods, which are often the ones that have lowest income, and are often the most racialized, are going to experience the worst kind of heat effects,” said Roy.

Inory went on to say, “Integral to the distribution of heat, is where the City chooses to place its parks, parks and tree cover are a massive aid to heat, they help prevent rises in temperature, they provide shade and canopies so that people can cool down. The presence of trees in a neighbourhood can effect the temperature in the neighbourhoood by anywhere in the realm of  10 to 20 degrees depending on how hot it is.” The problem is that lower income neighbourhoods don't very much greenery.

Mitigating the effects of adverse climate change has reached an unprecedented urgency throughout the world. In St. Jamestown, where Inory Roy chose to report on one local group, Community Resilience to Extreme Weather (CREW), she found a volunteer-led group who is  working on building networks of community volunteers to respond during extreme weather events. They go door-to-door checking in on area residents who be seniors or have health issues, informing them where cooling centres are located, and where the most shade can be found.

Beyond efforts at the local level, the city of Toronto has implemented its Toronto Green Standard (2010), which requires all new projects to have 50-70 percent high-albedo material content, materials that reflect sunlight and heat. Additionally, requirements for green roofs, and increases to tree planting around buildings and parkings areas are being prioritized.

Substantive changes that are mandated by policy offer area residents some hope that in future heatwaves they will be better prepared to dealing with the challenges posed by the adversities of climate change.