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Expert insights: Isabelle Putseys

How can we transform the ways we use energy and transportation, grow our food, build our houses, and develop our infrastructure in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C in the next decade? “We absolutely need to work together to plan and design communities and cities for future generations,” states Isabelle Putseys, Expert Leader at Sweco.

How would you like the world to be in 10 years from now?

Transforming the world into a resilient, net zero economy requires action that only closer collaboration can achieve.

“The public sector can’t do this alone, and the private sector shouldn’t wait for the public sector to solve all obstacles,” says Isabelle Putseys, Expert Leader at Sweco.

“The private sector has the potential to experiment and show how new ideas can be developed, they can be the frontrunners. In that sense, working together is essential.”

She also highlights citizen science as good examples of valuable collaboration. For example, DRYRivERS, a newly launched, open-source smartphone application to monitor drying events in river networks. Or the 16,000 British volunteers that transcribe 350 years of archival rainfall reports into digital documents for use by modern climate scientists.

“It opens up a huge amount of data that can help us to explore many more solutions and new insights, but it is also a tool that builds awareness and empowers citizens in the political debate. It creates a common ground to focus everyone in the same direction.”

To tackle climate change, it is now necessary to do more concrete work across all sectors towards systems change and, in doing so, reduce risks and costs for any one actor.

“A systemic change that requires new ways of collaboration, new stakeholders around the table, higher authorities, cities and municipalities, developers and urban planners in the search for new forms of production,” says Isabelle Putseys.

Isabelle Putseys, Expert Leader, Sweco

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Sweco plans and designs the sustainable communities and cities of the future. Let’s discuss how we can tackle climate change together.
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