How Earth’s first global heat officer is tackling climate change 地球上首位全球热官如何应对气候变化

This story is part of Nature’s 10, an annual list compiled by Nature’s editors exploring key developments in science and the individuals who contributed to them.
这个故事是《自然》杂志年度十大科学进展名单的一部分,该名单由《自然》杂志的编辑们编制,旨在探索科学领域的关键发展及其贡献者。

While temperatures soared and wildfires raged through the forests of Greece this July, Eleni Myrivili watched with horror from her home in Athens. “This is the type of devastation that you can’t really replace,” she says. “And this is clearly a catastrophe that we are responsible for.”
七月份,当气温飙升,野火在希腊的森林中肆虐时,埃莉尼·米里维利从她位于雅典的家中惊恐地观看着。“这种破坏是你真的无法替代的,”她说。“而这显然是一场我们要为之负责的灾难。”

Myrivili, a former deputy mayor of Athens, now has a global role working to mitigate the catastrophic impacts of the warming climate. She is the first United Nations chief heat officer — and has a remit to keep people cool as the planet boils.
米里维利,前雅典副市长,现在担任全球职务,致力于减轻气候变暖的灾难性影响。她是联合国首位首席高温官员——负责在地球升温之际保持人们的凉爽。

This July broke unofficial records for the hottest average global temperatures on a single day and month, and 2023 will almost certainly be the hottest year on record by the end of December. That extreme heat is taking a deadly toll. As just one example, a paper published in July estimated that heatwaves in Europe in 2022 killed more than 61,000 people between the end of May and early September, with Italy, Greece and Spain seeing the highest heat-related mortality rates (J. Ballester et al. Nature Med. 29, 1857–1866; 2023).
今年七月打破了全球平均气温在单日和整月的非官方最热记录,而且2023年几乎肯定会在12月底成为有记录以来最热的一年。这种极端高温正在造成致命的影响。举一个例子,一篇发表于七月的论文估计,2022年欧洲的热浪从五月底到九月初导致超过61,000人死亡,意大利、希腊和西班牙的与热相关的死亡率最高(J. Ballester等人,《自然医学》杂志,第29卷,第1857-1866页;2023年)。

Myrivili’s focus on heat is a long way from the start of her career as a cultural anthropologist. She got a PhD studying immigration, violence and borderlands, specializing in the region where Albania, North Macedonia and Greece meet. She then started teaching at the University of the Aegean in Μytilene, Greece. In summer 2007, parts of the country ignited in flames and much of Parnis National Park near Athens burned. “All of us who work in climate change have these moments where you kind of wake up to the reality of climate change,” she says. “For me, it was 2007.”
Myrivili对热度的关注与她作为文化人类学家职业生涯的起点相去甚远。她获得了博士学位,研究移民、暴力和边境地区,专注于阿尔巴尼亚、北马其顿和希腊交界的地区。之后,她开始在希腊米蒂林的爱琴海大学教书。2007年夏天,希腊部分地区突发大火,雅典附近的帕尼斯国家公园大面积燃烧。“我们所有研究气候变化的人都有那些时刻,你会突然意识到气候变化的现实,”她说。“对我来说,那是在2007年。”

Angered by the lack of information and advice about the fires, Myrivili decided to go into politics. After a stint working with a Greek green political party, she read the 2013 book If Mayors Ruled the World by Benjamin R. Barber and decided to pivot to city government.
对于火灾信息和建议的缺乏感到愤怒的Myrivili决定进入政界。在与一个希腊绿色政党合作一段时间后,她阅读了本杰明·R·巴伯在2013年的著作《如果市长统治世界》后,决定转向市政府工作。

Taking various positions in Athens’s government, she worked to infuse climate resilience and planning across city departments. When she became head of the parks department, she changed her title to chief of urban nature, resilience and climate-change adaptation to underscore what she saw as her focus. In 2021, she was named chief heat officer for Athens in a wave of such appointments in various cities, organized by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht–Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center in Washington DC.
在雅典政府担任各种职位期间,她致力于在全市各部门推广气候韧性和规划。当她成为公园部门的负责人时,她将自己的头衔改为城市自然、韧性和气候变化适应主管,以强调她认为的工作重点。2021年,她被任命为雅典的首席高温官员,这是由位于华盛顿特区的大西洋理事会的阿德里安娜·阿什特-洛克菲勒基金会韧性中心组织的在各个城市中的一系列此类任命的一部分。

To raise awareness of deadly weather patterns, Myrivili kicked off the practice in Greece of naming heatwaves. She also worked to secure funding for climate initiatives; in 2018, her team landed a €5-million loan (US$5.9 million at the time) from the European Investment Bank for climate-adaptation projects, including planting green spaces in Athens.
为了提高人们对致命天气模式的认识,Myrivili在希腊开始了给热浪命名的做法。她还努力争取气候倡议的资金;2018年,她的团队从欧洲投资银行获得了500万欧元(当时相当于590万美元)的贷款,用于气候适应项目,包括在雅典种植绿色空间。

Myrivili’s hard work and connections made her effective at gaining traction in city government, says Elissavet Bargianni, who succeeded Myrivili as the Athens chief heat officer earlier this year. “A lot of people have trust in her,” Bargianni says. “She can take something that may seem impossible and find a way to make it possible.”
米里维利的努力工作和人脉让她在市政府中获得了影响力,今年早些时候接替米里维利成为雅典首席高温官员的埃丽萨维特·巴尔贾尼说。“很多人都信任她,”巴尔贾尼说。“她能够把看似不可能的事情变为可能。”

Now, Myrivili is focused on raising awareness of extreme heat at the global level, and on securing money for projects through the auspices of UN Habitat, the programme that works towards making cities sustainable. That includes a global-cooling pledge introduced at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai this month. It aims to support the development and roll-out of cooling technologies that do not add to greenhouse-gas emissions.
现在,Myrivili 正专注于在全球范围内提高对极端高温的认识,并通过联合国人居署的支持为项目筹集资金,该计划致力于使城市可持续发展。这包括在本月迪拜举行的COP28气候会议上引入的全球降温承诺。其目的是支持开发和推广不增加温室气体排放的降温技术。

Just don’t mention air conditioning to Myrivili, who hates it for its climate impacts. But during a heatwave in 2021, she finally bought a small air-conditioning unit for her bedroom. “I still hate it,” she says.
只是别向Myrivili提起空调,她讨厌它对气候的影响。但在2021年的一次热浪中,她最终还是为自己的卧室买了一台小型空调。“我还是讨厌它,”她说。

And yet the use of air conditioners is only going to grow as temperatures climb. That’s one of the reasons Myrivili was at the Dubai climate negotiations that are trying to stop the world from burning — and aiming to prepare for what’s to come.
然而,随着气温的上升,空调的使用只会增加。这就是为什么Myrivili参加了在迪拜举行的气候谈判的原因之一,这些谈判试图阻止世界燃烧,并旨在为即将到来的情况做准备。

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03924-4

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