The Brooking’s Institute 17 Rooms report for 2023 focused on “Next Steps.” Professor Ito Peng served as co-lead to Room 5, along with Caren Growen of the World Bank.The Room 5 participants seek to address climate and care at the same time. The summary of their work reads as follows:
Climate change has exacerbated the caregiving responsibilities that largely fall to women and girls around the world and highlighted the need for greater societal and government attention to the provision of care services and infrastructure. Climate change stressors include increased incidence of food-, water-, and vector-borne diseases, loss of arable land and crop failures, and mental and physical stresses resulting from extreme weather events and associated economic shocks.
However, local-level conversations about how to address care needs and climate change happen in silos. Room 5 members seek to help cities address both care and climate simultaneously by creating a “Top 10” menu of action options and developing a global network of learning labs to test them, in cities including Barcelona, Bogota, and Toronto.