CoM SSA supports cities to access clean and resilient energy, lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce costs and boost employment. The best part: these cities do not need their own investment.
Rwanda has some of the most ambitious climate goals in Africa and its urban leaders are planning and implementing tangible actions to get there. These will increase city dwellers’ quality of life and protect the environment.
Despite the importance of adapting to climate change, not many cities have a plan to tackle it. From those that do, not all contemplate climate adaptation, which is essential given the irreversible damages that climate change will bring. Cristina Bernal Aparicio takes a look at eleven local climate adaptation plans to assess if cities are ready for the climate challenges to come.
Lou Del Bello reports on COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference that took place in Glasgow, Scotland.
Good governance is key for achieving the national CO2 emission reductions, known as Nationally Determined Contributions. But the “how-to” remains undescribed. Scott A. Muller presents us with local experiences to close this gap.
For low-income families in coastal areas of Vietnam, storm and typhoon damage is a constant threat to life and well-being. However, there is a way for them to escape the vicious cycle, involving proper financial and technical support for storm-resilience housing. Nguyen Anh Tho presents experiences from Da Nang City.
Urban climate action is essential for global carbon neutrality. A study by the German Development Institute has assessed the importance of stakeholder involvement, financing, and impact assessment for urban zero-carbon transformation.
Reducing carbon emissions is no longer enough to reduce the effects of climate change, making climate adaptation – the process of adjustment to climate change and entailing hazards – necessary. Cristina Bernal Aparicio takes a look at Spain's climate adaptation plan, its flaws, and its potential.
All over the world, cities are grappling with the pandemic's social and economic impacts. Carmen Vogt, Philip Koch, and Lukas Prinz present some inspiring examples from Latin America that showcase how cities can build back better.
To learn more about the three levels of action required to improve municipal finance and ultimately build climate-neutral cities, take a look at this short explanatory film by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
A newly proposed tax reform could quintuple Freetown’s budget for the delivery of much-needed urban services. Yet, a political stalemate may endanger the city’s push for more transparency and progress. Braima Koroma, Dr Joseph Macarthy and Yasmina Yusuf from the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre spotlight the country’s current state of decentralisation.
To those not willing – or able – to spend money, many public spaces are not as public as they pretend to be. This has to change, argues Tuna Taşan-Kok, making the case for new coalitions in urban development.
Delegates at COP25 in Madrid reached an agreement, without the robust language and ambitions that were wished to be seen in the approved texts. This leaves subnational and urban leaders responsible for implementing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), making local climate activities the messengers of hope.
The climate summit in Madrid represents a unique opportunity for urban communities to take inspiration from each other, to build cities that are better prepared to tackle climate change, and to obtain investments. National delegates will need to increasingly confide in local authorities and provide them with more resources if they want to develop prompt and effective responses to the climate crisis.
The SNG-WOFI initiative collects comparable data on national, subnational, regional, and municipal government finance flows in order to enable informed and targeted policy-making. Following are the latest key findings of the Observatory as presented at its international conference on June 17, 2019 in Paris, France, summarised for URBANET by Isabelle Chatry, Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD.
