9 Recommendations for action
9.5.3.3 Goal 3: Gear the financing of international development and climate mitigation more closely to urban development Globally: Gear international collaborations to agreed objectives Financial support measures in the context of international cooperation are of key importance for cities in developing countries. The WBGU welcomes the agreement reached by 193 countries in the Addis Ababa Action Plan in July 2015 on a stable framework for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and forging stronger links between the international agendas of development and climate policy; the WBGU also supports the fact that the agreement takes into account both urban investment requirements and the need to boost international cooperation on developing and c onsolidating local administrative capacities (UN, 2015a: Action Area 34). Furthermore, “Creating climate-compatible cities” is mentioned as one of the five expenditure aims of the Green Climate Fund, so that, according to the WBGU’s assessment, sufficient attention is already being paid to the field of urban development in the announcements made to date. National and multilateral actors in international cooperation should focus more on urban development and, against the background of global urbanization dynamics, coherently gear their operational strategies towards the international agreements, and consistently implement agreed objectives.
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Globally: Direct international financial resources to the municipalities as required In cooperation with national governments, it should be ensured that a direct funding of cities and municipalities is possible in international cooperation. The WBGU recommends steering international financial resources (e. g. funds from official development assistance, development banks, the Green Climate Fund) towards municipalities as required (i. e. on a problem-oriented basis), and to use these resources in particular to reduce structural constraints, for example to secure the basic urban infrastructure and basic functions, consolidate urban management, set up municipal financing instruments, and directly mobilize private funds (Meyer, 2016). Since most international development banks demand a guarantee from the national government for sub-national financing projects, and some development banks – such as KfW Group – are not allowed to take on project financing and the associated project risks, corresponding changes and instruments for risk management are needed to ensure that more money reaches the municipalities in the long term.
Globally: Clarify accounting rules of the Green Climate Fund to avoid double counting The Green Climate Fund (GCF) to which cities also contribute, will in future be able to make considerable funds available that can also be used for the urban transformation towards climate compatibility. However, up to now no agreement has been reached on the accounting rules on the industrialized countries’ financing of climate mitigation. Under the current accounting rules there are overlaps of content and planning between climate-mitigation financing and development financing (KfW, 2015). The WBGU recommends depicting ambiguities in the accounting rules in a transparent way and swiftly finding solutions for them.
9.6 Synopsis The present report outlines the special challenges and opportunities faced by cities in this century from the perspective of the necessary transformation towards sustainability. One characteristic feature of the debate on the search for solutions is the enormous diversity of instruments and solution pathways. Consequently, there is no such thing as a blueprint for sustainable urban development. Nevertheless, in Table 9.6-1 the WBGU dares to order, concentrate and emphasize the recommendations given in Sections 9.1 to 9.5 and prioritizes them in two ways: >> Six key development risks can be identified in the global urbanization surge with its wide range of dynamics (Section 7.5). >> Necessary paradigm shifts, overarching goals, and appropriate measures with a particularly large leverage effect can be assigned to overcoming these major urban problems and managing the urban transformation towards sustainability. This is not only relevant to planning and governance issues, but also, in many ways, to the activation of the transformative potential of the urban societies themselves. As an overall, general measure, the WBGU recommends upgrading the topic of ‘Urbanization and Transformation’ to a permanent item on the agenda of the G20. Germany’s presidency of the G20 in 2017 should be used to put the topic onto the agenda. The WBGU also recommends that the federal government should advocate a reform of the UN-Habitat programme and the establishment of an international scientific panel on urbanization and sustainable urban development.International research as well as inter- and transdisciplinary working methods should be strengthened in this field.