The urgent call for increased climate finance for local and regional governments has resonated globally with stakeholders rallying to address this challenge. Initial commitments and progress on mechanisms at COP29 in Baku, while encouraging, mark just the beginning of a critical journey toward COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
Daring Cities 2022 highlighted the pivotal role of cities in responding to the climate emergency through innovative finance, people-centered approaches, and resilience initiatives, emphasizing the need for formalizing climate action processes, improving funding access, and including traditionally underrepresented groups.
This blog was written by Adel Strydom, Senior Communications Officer at ICLEI Africa, and Kale Roberts, Senior Program Officer at ICLEI USA. Cities, regions and other local governments – where climate action so often ultimately plays out – are driving finance conversations at the summit. Yesterday’s #Time4MultileveAction dialogue brought the right people in the room…
Local and regional governments can talk all they want about tackling climate change, but at the end of the day, “nothing will happen on the ground without the financing… at least nothing of substance,” observes Nigel Jollands, the associate director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). “The only way we’re going to…
ICLEI South Asia and SouthSouthNorth (SSN), under the Climate Development Knowledge Network-Knowledge Accelerator (CDKN-KA) project, organised three sessions over a fortnight in October during the Daring Cities 2020, a virtual global forum, to deliberate on the need to bridge the gap between knowledge and action. Given the climate urgency, the sessions discussed possible ways to…
By: Dr Sebastiaan van Herk and Sophie Rasbash of Bax & Company The cost of climate adaptation for developing countries is rising rapidly. Global public finance commitments to address climate change are also growing. According to the IHE Delft Institute, funding jumped from $4 billion in 2010 to $25 billion in 2013, but this is…
Seventy-five percent of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has not been built yet, according to Global Infrastructure Basel. So, how can we ensure that this infrastructure gets financed and built in a way that factors in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues? Cities in emerging economies, particularly in Africa, face numerous challenges in…
Financing resilient urban development is an essential tool in achieving global sustainability targets. Yet there is a lack of communication in the sector and an urgent need to bridge the gap between financial institutions and local governments in particular. Hans-Peter Egler, CEO of the Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation (GIB), opened the “Financing resilience forum” at Resilient…
Over the next fifteen years, the global urban population is going to increase significantly, and the built environment required to accommodate this growth will expand in turn. In order to ensure that this expansion is carried out in a way which avoids lock-in effects – that would be disastrous to the targets established in the…
When it comes to financing urban resilience, there is a clear gap between demand and supply. Comprehensive resilience infrastructure will require $4 trillion per year between 2015 and 2030. However, current spend is around $2 trillion per year, and much of this is fragmented. Cities have ambitious plans and projects, as shown by their collective…
This blog post was prepared by UCLG. In line with the dynamic started during the World Summit Climate & Territories in Lyon last July, non-state stakeholders mobilized on the issue of financing the fight against climate change have gathered on several occasions during the COP21, in order to strengthen the synergies between on-going initiatives, and bring…
Cities Alliance and UN-Habitat hosted a session at the Cities & Regions Pavilion on 9 December. Entitled “Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Urban Projects” and facilitated by Robert Kehew, Unit Leader, Climate Change Planning Unit, UN-Habitat, Kenya, the session looked at both the demand and supply sides of urban climate investment. While there is a…