Keeping cool is getting harder as thermometers spike around the world. The good news? There are lots of innovative ideas on how to do it.

Water-scarce Cape Town is installing water spray parks rather than swimming pools. Colombia's Medellin is creating shaded, walkable green corridors through the city - and training people in low-income neighbours to maintain them.

Tokyo has installed three marathon courses' worth of heat-reflective pavement. New York is pondering setting a maximum temperature landlords must adhere to in rental housing.

But making sure innovations protect the most vulnerable - the poor who cannot pay air-conditioning bills, older people battling health problems, outdoor workers, racial minorities living in areas with little green space - remains a challenge.

"We need to be able to level that playing field by putting public investment in those areas," says Kizzy Charles-Guzman of the New York City mayor's resiliency office.

"Otherwise people will perish from the climate crisis."

Heat-vulnerable workers include a few you may not have thought of - from nurses carrying out COVID-19 tests in parking lots to firefighters facing longer forest-fire seasons and teachers toiling in sweltering classrooms without air conditioning.

How can the threats to workers be reduced? Often changes need to start with government policy, which can then pull business on board.

But companies themselves are recognising the risks, with heat stress predicted to drive productivity losses equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs in 2030.

"Now that they are also seeing the impact on their bottom line - the economic costs - they are twice as likely to engage," says researcher Andreas Flouris of Greece's University of Thessaly.

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