Cooling the Heat: How Paris Pupils Became Climate Pioneers in Their Own Schoolyards

Target 13.1 – Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards

Paris is a city known for its architecture, its history, and its wide boulevards, not for its heat. But over the past decade, the French capital has experienced a steady rise in extreme summer temperatures. Heatwaves lasting days, sometimes weeks, now hit the city each year. The hardest-hit? Children in schools with no shade, no greenery, and entire playgrounds covered in blacktop.

In 2023, Ghid Karam, a climate scientist and community organiser, had seen enough. She joined forces with teachers, parents, local officials and landscape architects to launch the OASIS Schoolyard Project, a plan to transform asphalt schoolyards into cool, green, and inclusive urban spaces.

OASIS stands for “Open, Adaptable, Social, Inclusive and Sustainable.” But the idea was simple: if we can’t control the city’s temperature, we can at least make sure children have a place to stay safe, play, and learn during extreme heat.

Ghid’s team began by identifying schools in heat-vulnerable districts. They combined GIS data, temperature mapping, and social indicators to find out where pupils were most exposed and least protected. From that, they selected 38 pilot schools for complete yard redesigns.

But instead of hiring outside consultants to handle the redesign, the team brought the students themselves into the process.

In workshops, pupils walked their schoolyards with heat sensors. They marked “hot spots” where the ground was too hot to touch. They measured surface temperatures, often above 55°C in direct sunlight, and proposed what they would change: more shade, more trees, more seating, less concrete.

From those consultations came real design changes. Asphalt was replaced with permeable, bio-sourced materials. Reflective surfaces reduced ground-level temperatures. Shade trees and trellises were added, along with benches, planters, and water features. Each yard became a microclimate, cooler by up to 15°C compared to the original design.

By summer 2024, the results were visible and tangible.

Children stayed outside longer. Teachers reported fewer incidents of heat exhaustion. Parents stopped worrying about mid-day pick-ups. In one school, an entire classroom moved its reading sessions outdoors, under a shaded pergola built by local volunteers.

But what made the project work wasn’t just the infrastructure, it was the approach. Ghid didn’t come in with a blueprint. She co-designed with the people who use the space daily. She worked within city planning channels. And she ensured the changes were integrated into Paris’s broader 2030 resilience plan, so the project didn’t end as a one-off pilot.

By 2025, 15 schools had completed full transformations, with dozens more approved for rollout. Other cities in France, and across Europe, began replicating the model. Some adapted it for elderly care homes, community centres or libraries. All started with the same logic: cooling is not a luxury. It’s climate adaptation at the street level.

This is what SDG 13.1 looks like when it’s done well. Not emergency response after the damage. Not long reports about risk. Real, measurable adaptation that’s built with, not just for, the people most affected.

The OASIS project proved that climate resilience doesn’t have to wait for national policy. You can start with a schoolyard. A patch of tarmac. A few trees. Some reflective paint. And the belief that local environments matter.

And when you let children lead the way, the solutions aren’t just smarter. They’re also fairer.

Your Voice. Your Target. Your Legacy.

If your school, council or organisation wants to protect people from rising heat, start with the hottest surfaces. Map where the danger lives. Involve children and staff. Plant, paint, build shade. Cool the ground, calm the space, and let it grow into something bigger.

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