Cities are a key in the climate fight
Researchers from SDU have, together with colleagues from UN-Habitat, written a guide on how countries around the world can incorporate cities into their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Cities represent an untapped potential in the fight against climate change, they say.
They consume 70% of the world's energy and account for 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Cities.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of the world’s countries have not included cities in their national climate action plans, the so-called NDCs, which countries must prepare and submit under the Paris Agreement. Only 27% have a “strong focus” on cities.
But that may now be changing. Researchers from SDU.Resilience, together with UN-Habitat, have published a guide on how nations can concretely develop plans for both climate action and climate adaptation in cities to include in the updated NDCs which are due this year.
And that is important for several reasons, says Nicola Tollin, professor at SDU and head of SDU.Resilience:
- It’s not just that cities are responsible for a very large share of global greenhouse gas emissions and therefore hold great potential for reductions. It’s also about the fact that many cities are vulnerable when climate change hits, for example in the form of extreme weather events.
The fact that only a few countries worldwide have written cities directly into their NDCs does not mean that no climate action is taking place in cities.
For example, all Danish municipalities have set very clear goals for climate action and adaptation, yet Denmark’s NDC, which was submitted jointly with the rest of the EU, contains no focus on cities.
- One might argue that as long as climate action is taking place, it doesn’t matter whether it’s included in the NDCs or not, but that’s not true. The NDCs are also linked to national funding. Right now, there are plenty of cities that would very much like to do a lot more, but are unable to financially, as they only have their own municipal or local budgets to work with, says Nicola Tollin.
The new guide is primarily aimed at legislators, stakeholders and civil servants and is based on the results of a report that SDU.Resilience and UN-Habitat published last year. It is structured around three concrete steps that countries can take to strengthen climate action in cities and also includes examples from countries that have incorporated cities into their NDCs.
Read the guide here.