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Greening schools for climate-resilient, inclusive and liveable cities

Nature Climate Change (2025)Cite this article

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Transforming school environments into nature-based climate shelters not only promotes cooling and greening under extreme heat, but also fosters quality education, ecological restoration, empowerment and reconnection with nature, and provides children with healthier, safer, more playful, equitable and climate-proof spaces.

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Fig. 1: The main benefits offered by nature-based climate school shelters.

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Acknowledgements

This work builds on the COOLSCHOOLS project (https://coolschools.eu) and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101003758, the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), Innoviris (Brussels Capital Region), Dutch Research Council (NWO), The Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). F.B.’s contribution to this work is also funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ESF+ through the grant RYC2023-042663-I.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain

    Isabel Ruiz-Mallén

  2. TURBA Lab, Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Social and Cultural Transformations (TRÀNSIC), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain

    Isabel Ruiz-Mallén, Raquel Colacios & Filka Sekulova

  3. University Research Institute for Sustainability Science And Technology, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

    Francesc Baró

  4. Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

    Francesc Baró

  5. Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium

    Francesc Baró, Elsa Gallez & Amy Phillips

  6. Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium

    Francesc Baró & Elsa Gallez

  7. Social Epidemiology and Health Policy (SEHPO), Department of Family Medicine and Population Health (FAMPOP), University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium

    Hayat Bentouhami & Lidia Casas

  8. UMR 7533 CNRS LADYSS, Paris, France

    Nathalie Blanc & Céline Clauzel

  9. Université Paris Cité, Paris, France

    Nathalie Blanc

  10. Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Céline Clauzel

  11. Department of Planning, Property and Environmental Management, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Amy Phillips

  12. Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Paula Presser & Diana Reckien

  13. Department of Economic History, Institutions, Politics and World Economy, University of Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain

    Filka Sekulova

Authors
  1. Isabel Ruiz-Mallén
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  2. Francesc Baró
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  3. Hayat Bentouhami
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  4. Nathalie Blanc
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  5. Lidia Casas
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  6. Céline Clauzel
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  7. Raquel Colacios
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  8. Elsa Gallez
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  10. Paula Presser
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  11. Diana Reckien
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  12. Filka Sekulova
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Isabel Ruiz-Mallén or Francesc Baró.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Ruiz-Mallén, I., Baró, F., Bentouhami, H. et al. Greening schools for climate-resilient, inclusive and liveable cities. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02519-3

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