Local and regional leaders from around the world signed the Bonn-Fiji Commitment on Sunday, November 12, 2017 at the UN Climate Change Conference summit (COP23) in the bid to take further, faster action to deliver the Paris Agreement at all levels of government.

With more than half the global population living in cities and expected to approach two thirds by 2050, the Bonn-Fiji Commitment of Local and Regional Leaders to deliver the Paris Agreement pushes forward efforts to advance sustainable urban development as an integral part of  urgent global climate action and the inter-linked goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This is particularly focused around Sustainable Development Goal 11 – to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

“City and regional governments are pushing ahead, with an acute sense of their role in building a resilient, low carbon society,” said Ashok Sridharan, Lord Mayor of Bonn, Germany and First Vice President of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. “Urban areas will play an influential role in the course of global development. By making urban sustainability a core part of national climate action, countries will be in a better position to meet and exceed their national climate goals.”

The commitment encompasses 19 initiatives, including The European Covenant of Mayors and Compact of Mayors joining forces to create the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy – the largest coalition of over 7,400 cities from six continents and 121 countries to reduce emissions and make societies and economies resilient to climate change.

Cities are responsible for as much as 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels used for energy and transport, and 13 percentof the global urban population lives in vulnerable low-elevation coastal areas.

As of today, more than 1,000 local and regional governments from 86 countries, representing over 800 million people, have reported emissions reduction targets on the carbonn Climate Registry, which, once achieved, would result in a reduction of 5.6 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2020 and 26.8 GtCO2e by 2050.

Additionally, the aggregated impact of cities and local governments under the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), an initiative served by the registry and two other reporting platforms, could collectively achieve a cumulative total reduction of 15.64 GtCO2e between 2010 and 2030.

Nevertheless, there are still gaps in the regulatory and financial mechanisms needed to scale up sustainable urban development.

City governments often have limited control over sectors such as energy, transport and finance, which directly and indirectly affect urban development, while only about a quarter of countries have national urban policies.

Additionally, city access to finance has thus far been limited, despite the high demand for low carbon, resilient infrastructure.

The Urban Climate Change research network says an estimated 80 percent of the costs of adapting to climate change are needed in urban areas. But much of the estimated $80 to $100 billion financing needed per year remains inaccessible to city governments and there is also a lack of bankable local projects reaching investors.

“To quickly accelerate sustainable, resilient urban development, we need a new framework of cooperation among national, regional and local governments,” said Dr Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN-Habitat. “Cities can play a greater role in renewable energy generation sector, not only as advocates and mobilisers but as energy generators, now that the capital investment and prize for renewable energy is affordable for cities in comparison with the past. Cities can become carbon neutral in municipal energy requirements, like public lighting, public transport, sewage and waste management.”

Cities and regions have not been alone in rallying behind urban action. The Climate Summit of Local and Regional Leaders, hosted by the City of Bonn and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Marrakech Partnership Global Climate Action Agenda SDG 11 Day featured ministers and business leaders alongside mayors and city representatives.

Coming out of Bonn is plenty of evidence that cities and regions are self-organising and forging partnerships to bring forward local action.

The key commitments to urban action in the Bonn-Fiji Commitment are as follows:

• The European Covenant of Mayors and Compact of Mayors have joined forces to create the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, the largest global coalition of over 7,400 cities from six continents and 121 countries advancing city-level transitions to low emission and climate resilient economies through voluntary action.
• The Urban Leadership Council – a group of representatives from city networks, urban think tanks, and the private sector launches today, aiming to build high-level political commitment to sustainable urban development in rapidly urbanising countries and provide guidance to the Coalition for Urban Transitions, an initiative overseen by C40, the WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities and the New Climate Economy.
• R20 and Blue Orchard Finance have created the African Sub-national Climate Fund to bridge the gap between infrastructure demands and the low number of bankable projects reaching investors, by providing ready-to-invest projects and funds to support the implementation of at least 100 infrastructure projects by 2020.
• ICLEI and GLISPA are launching Front-Line Cities and Islands, a coalition of coastal cities and islands on the front lines of climate change, working to build resilience across small islands through coastal city-to-island partnerships.
• RegionsAdapt led by nrg4sd is pushing ahead as the first global initiative for regional governments to take concrete action, cooperate and report efforts on climate adaptation.
• The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and FMDV are launching the WAEMU Regional Partnership for Localising Finance to advocate fiscal decentralisation and innovative financing strategies and mechanisms.
• The City Climate Planner program from WRI, GBCI and ICLEI will raise the global talent base of city climate planning professionals through training and professional certifications.
• PLATFORMA is the pan-European coalition representing over 100,000 local and regional governments from Europe that engage in international action. PLATFORMA is a political voice that monitors and informs European Union development policies and that has a specific focus on partnerships for climate action.
• The Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA), a regional body of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, is opening the door for more Sub-Saharan cities to join efforts to expand access to sustainable and efficient energy services.
• BMZ, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, has launched the Green People’s Energy for Africa to decarbonise the African energy sector. BMZ is also convening leading institutions under the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) to support the construction and expansion of sustainable mobility systems in developing and newly industrialised countries.
• Climate Chance is mobilising African cities and regions to advance implementation of the Paris Agreement.
• DST, the Association of Germany Cities, is developing Sustainable Development Goal indicators for German municipalities to ensure they can align with and track progress towards global targets.
• ICLEI is launching the Urban Transitions Alliance, a group of industrial and former industrial cities making a transition to become global leaders in sustainable urban development. ICLEI and the NDC Partnership are now working together to design, implement and align climate action strategies across all levels of governments.
• The SuRe Standard, developed by the Global Infrastructure Basel (GIB) Foundation is being launched to strengthen sustainable and resilient infrastructure development by guiding project owners in accounting for social, environment and governance criteria, while enabling them to communicate benefits to potential investors.
• The One Planet City Challenge, an initiative of WWF and ICLEI, combines a friendly biannual competition, capacity building, technical support and public promotion, provides a way for cities to engage in long term reporting of their climate performance.
• The Climate Reporting Partnership brings together CDP and the ICLEI carbonn Climate Registry, two of the leading climate reporting platforms in the world, in an effort to build a robust database of self-reported climate commitments, actions and performance tracking by public and private actors.
• Planners for Climate Action, from UN-Habitat, helps ensure urban and regional planners can play a strong role in advancing global climate and sustainability goals. To this end, the initiative will improve urban and regional planning practice and planning education.

Global cities and communities announced new initiatives on Saturday, November 11, 2017 at the UN Climate Change Conference to coordinate their many climate action commitments better and deliver bigger, faster results together.

Senior delegates at the COP23 Human Settlements Day urged governments also to get more into the finer detail of policy and planning together with them and raise the ambition of the many national climate plans – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – which countries have submitted under the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

“Local and regional governments are making commitments that will help national governments close the gap between current national commitments and the emissions reductions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement targets. If nations are to uphold the agreement goals and keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius, they need to set clear mechanisms for consulting and engaging with their local and regional governments, making them equal partners in a well-coordinated and effective effort,” said Gino Van Begin, Secretary General of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.

The action day brought into sharp perspective the inextricably linked and urgent action required to achieve both the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goal 11, which is to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

“In the (last) 20 years, the world has seen a gathering of its population in urban areas. This has been accompanied by socioeconomic growth in many instances. But the urban landscape is changing and with it, the pressing need for a cohesive and realistic approach to urbanisation,” said UN-Habitat Executive Director, Dr Joan Clos.

Urban areas account for around two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global energy use. Their overall contribution to total greenhouse gas emissions is estimated at between 37% and 49% globally, depending on base assumptions of data used.

Industry sectors connected to human settlements have a major impact. Buildings, for example, are responsible for some 40% of global GHG emissions yet are an essential element for countries to achieve their NDCs. 132 of the NDCs submitted explicitly mention the building sector. If these NDC pledges were achieved in addition to existing action, about 60% of buildings-related CO2 emissions would be covered. However, nearly one-third of NDCs mentioning buildings do not indicate specific actions on how to achieve their ambition.

“Over the coming years net zero carbon buildings will be essential in helping countries achieve their nationally determined contributions,” said Terri Wills, CEO of the World Green Building Council.

Seven new initiatives to improve this situation, listed in detail below, include work by ICLEI and the global NDC Partnership to design, implement and align climate action strategies across all levels of governments.

Also, the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) is mapping available finance to match known infrastructure projects – a critical requirement to help local government identify funding.

“It is up to the community of public, institutional and private investors to assist us in co-creating new markets of opportunity for their sustainable investments: in a transparent and responsible collaborative consultation with us, and by exploring the new financial models, to test and deploy at the scale of identified needs,” said François Albert Amichia, Mayor of Treichville and Minister for Sports, Cote d’Ivoire.

Meanwhile, the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, which was launched by France and UN Environment in Paris to increase the decarbonisation of buildings and the construction sector, signed a common statement to dramatically speed up and scale up collaborative action.

“We need to ensure that housing and infrastructure investments that come with growing urbanisation are also low-carbon, resource-efficient and resilient to deliver the 2030 Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement,” said Martina Otto, Head of Cities Unit at UN Environment.

It is increasingly evident that cities play an essential role in both climate change mitigation and adaption, while improving their citizen’s health and well-being. Well-planned cities are resilient and reduce congestion, pollution and, by promoting energy and resource efficiency, lead to reduced emissions and resource consumption. They are hubs for innovation, jobs and social interaction.

“Local and Regional Governments welcome the celebration of a Human Settlements Day in the framework of the UN Climate Change negotiations, as a recognition of the critical role of all territorial actors. It also reaffirms the inter linkages between the climate agenda and all global agendas …making cities and all human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable,” said Monica Fein, Mayor of Rosario, Argentina, and Vice-President of UCLG.