Across the street from a block of dense office buildings in western Paris, Bernard Sokler was surrounded by trees, weeds and crickets, as he tended to a bush of purple wildflowers in a largely forgotten strip of land, reports The New York Times.
Mr. Sokler, 60, and his team look after the greenery around a set of disused train tracks that circle Paris, known as the Little Belt, that the city is pushing to revitalize as it aims to mitigate the effects of climate change. With temperatures recently soaring to as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the project is intended to offer some respite for the city’s residents — though it will come at a cost to the flora and fauna that now call the tracks home.
“If you want a true nature reserve, you can’t let humans in,” said Philippe Billot, who oversees Mr. Sokler and other gardeners on part of the Little Belt as part of his work for Espaces, an environmental group that, among other things, helps take care of green spaces in the Paris region. “But,” Mr. Billot added, “Paris will be one of the worst cities in terms of global warming, so we need to open places like these.”
Paris has just half the green cover of Berlin and Madrid, and the dense suburbs surrounding the French capital put the green of the countryside even farther out of reach. Central Paris is typically two or three degrees Celsius (three to five degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than its suburbs, and that difference can stretch to 10 degrees during extreme heat waves as buildings trap the excess heat.
This may explain why, as a Lancet study found, Paris was the European capital with the highest number of excess deaths during heat waves in the first two decades of this century.
“It is hard to leave Paris during a heat wave, whereas cities like Bordeaux or Marseille are surrounded by easily accessible nature,” said Eric Larrey, an engineer who works at a company that helps French cities adapt to climate change.
A longtime pride of Paris, the Little Belt opened at the end of the 19th century, before the city’s subway. The train line shuttled workers to factories, brought cattle to the slaughterhouse and carried raw materials like sugar into the city, before falling into disuse starting in the mid-20th century.
The hope now is that this haven of green can offer crucial breathing space to a city ill adapted to heat. The project, which started in 2006, is scheduled to open 19 more acres to the public in the next three years.