Urban forestry and urban greening in drylands: improving resilience, health, and wellbeing of urban communities

Rapidly expanding cities in very dry parts of the world must be turned into "green urban oases" to ensure they become both healthier places to live in and more resilient to climate change, according to this new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Rapidly expanding cities in very dry parts of the world must be turned into "green urban oases" to ensure they become both healthier places to live in and more resilient to climate change, said this new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Some 35 percent of the world’s largest cities are built in the world’s drylands. This includes such megacities as Cairo, Mexico City and New Delhi. In all, they are home to more than 2 billion people, 90 percent of them in developing countries. According to the report, Urban forestry and urban greening in drylands, these sprawling and crowded dryland cities face a high risk of social, environmental and economic crisis as they grow. They are becoming hotter and more polluted and face mounting pressure on their scarce natural resources and weak infrastructure, making them among the most vulnerable places in the world to external shocks from the extreme weather events that climate change brings.