Bryony Cottam

During a heatwave in the UK, July 2024. Image: Zeynep Demir Aslim London Mayor Sadiq Khan has officially launched Heat Ready London, a comprehensive strategic plan designed to adapt the city to the growing threat of extreme heat and a warming climate. The launch comes as London faces an unprecedented June heatwave, marking only the second time in history the Met Office has issued a red warning for extreme heat in the capital.

The frequency of extreme weather events in the Caribbean has more than doubled so far this century. Image: Shutterstock Strung along the eastern edge of the Caribbean, the Lesser Antilles is a chain of small islands facing the open Atlantic. Storms moving west from the ocean often meet these islands first. Beneath them, tectonic plates collide, feeding the volcanic arc that has shaped their mountains, soils and, at times, their disasters.

Hinatea Colombani and Moe Meder with one of the barkcloths they’ve made. Image: KZN Photography When Hinatea Colombani set out to make her first tapa, there was no one left to show her how. All she had was the bark she’d cut from a mulberry tree and an i‘e – the tool to turn it into cloth. ‘It was like we had all the ingredients to make a cake, but no recipe to follow.’ She unrolls a length of cream-coloured material roughly the width and length of a table runner.