EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in late 2015 cities took their place as leaders in responding to the threat of climate change. C40 cities, having already taken more than 10,000 climate actions, demonstrated their leadership in reducing carbon emissions and adapting to climate change, by setting ambitious goals through their commitments to the Compact of Mayors1. In order to achieve the aims of the Paris Agreement and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, swift and comprehensive action must be taken by a range of state and non-state actors, including cities. In this report C40 city leaders ask their partners and collaborators, locally and internationally, to join them in taking robust climate action in the crucial years before 2020 by which emissions must peak. This report is a call to all those who work with or in cities on tackling climate change to engage with city governments and accelerate climate action by: •
Establishing a new paradigm of government collaboration
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Enabling cities to lead from the front
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Resetting the climate narrative
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Unlocking the power of citizens
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Building collaboration between the private sector and cities
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Improving the flow of finance to cities
This report describes the barriers and challenges city governments often face when taking climate action. It provides the basis for developing a shared understanding that can allow city leaders and key collaborators to work together to overcome these challenges. C40’s 2015 report Potential for Climate Action identified over 26,000 additional climate actions that cities have not yet taken due to a range of barriers – from a lack of resources to poorly designed legislation2. By leveraging C40’s unique network of more than 80 global cities, this report presents the candid perspective of city practitioners on the key challenges that limit climate action. It provides a window into the reality of implementing climate action in cities. In Potential for Climate Action C40 showed how over 75% of the challenges cities face cannot be managed unilaterally3. Powering Climate Action demonstrated that cities rely on a collaborative approach to governance for the majority of the transformative actions they take, showing that cities are often already very effective at partnering and collaborating4. Collaboration with partners in other sectors is therefore vital. Cities recognise that they can continue to become even better partners – to nations, to the private sector, and to other cities – by working together to overcome common challenges. This report aims to provide the much-needed insight and impetus to allow cities and their partners to form a common understanding and work together to accelerate and expand local climate action.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 http://www.compactofmayors.org/ 2 Potential for Climate Action: Cities are Just Getting Started. C40 and Arup, 2015. 3 ibid 4 Powering Climate Action: Cities as Global Changemakers. C40 and Arup, 2015.
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