UCLG ASPAC conducted an ASEAN City Leaders dialogue on 17th January 2022 for cities and local governments to share and learn from each other. Addressing the importance of multilevel action, UCLG ASPAC invited not only local governments but also some global speakers from UCLG World, GCoM Global, UNESCAP, ICLEI, and World Bank to share their findings and insights.
Most cities in ASEAN are impacted by climate change. According to the data, more than 1,400 high-risk hazards (extreme heat, flood, etc) might affect 315 million people. One big pillar that links the resilience and basic services and it is critical to push the ambitions of local government.
The important role of local governments to tackle climate change has been mentioned in the Paris Agreement. In fact, local governments can not do all action alone, there is a need for vertical and horizontal collaboration because synchronized action will give better impacts on our shared goals.
In responding to the climate emergency, each party should be able to identify the key issues, go beyond mere adaptation and mitigation, build resilience by investing in green infrastructures and nature-based solutions, and ensure a fair and equal distribution of the benefits of climate action and resilience building while acknowledging the current climate state.
In this panel discussion, many notable speakers from various global institutions were invited as supporting actors to help local governments in achieving local climate actions. Mr. Jean Baptiste, Senior Advocacy Officer of UCLG World Secretariat, shared that UCLG has been actively advocating local governments’ role in various global climate agendas. The Paris Agreement was the key turning point and has been the key framework for UCLG’s advocacy. UCLG was present in COP26 and achieved some remarkable success, such as bringing the importance of local and regional governments in the Glasgow Climate Pact. This is an important step to highlight the urgent need for multilevel cooperation and action since it was not mentioned in many global climate agendas. Other than that, UCLG also advocated and lobbied national delegations through GTF networks and had a successful bilateral meeting with the UN Secretary-General on inclusive multilateralism.
After COP26, UCLG will keep on building tools to connect with the members. In October 2022, UCLG will be holding UCLG Congress in Daejeon, South Korea. This congress will become UCLG’s key milestone before COP27 and will be addressing some agendas such as resilience and adaptation, food systems, finances, nature and biodiversity, culture, mitigation, and loss and damages. Moving forward, for the upcoming COP27 UCLG will be working on the UCLG Policy Council roadmap to ensure that climate action will benefit vulnerable groups, acknowledging the state of climate emergency, working on development agendas on the global south, and enhancing climate ambition of local government leaders.
Mr. Curt Carrigan, Chief of Urban Development Section of UNESCAP, shared that UNESCAP has four key priorities for this year. First, UNESCAP will be working to enable an environment that supports concrete policy changes, build capacity, and expand the partnership. Second, UNESCAP will help local governments in special urban development planning by integrating climate considerations and sectoral priorities that cities need to look fundamentally at in urban development planning. He emphasized the importance of this point because the Asia Pacific is still experiencing rapid urbanisation which is interlinked with energy demand and emission generation in the region. Third, UNESCAP will assist cities with climate-sensitive action planning. It will not only focus on project preparation but also will help the governments to access climate financing. Fourth, several cross cutting issues will be included as part of the overall planning process in the post-pandemic eras such as resilient recovery, biodiversity, health issues, and social inclusion.
Mr. Curt Carrigan also hoped to achieve some outputs from the priorities that have been set. UNESCAP will work on policy coherence between NDCs and the actual condition of cities. This approach hopefully can help not only to achieve NDCs, but also to achieve the SDGs. UNESCAP will also assist local governments on climate-sensitive urban planning that integrates with the urban development plans. However, any plan could not be made into concrete action without adequate funding. Therefore, UNESCAP will help local governments to leverage projects in getting financed to ensure that the project could be implemented and monitored effectively. But most importantly, he reminded, a regional exchange through transnational learning is also important for cities to learn the best experiences from each other.
Mr. Andy Deacon from the Global Covenant of Mayors Secretariat presented the progress made by GCoM city members. Based on the GCoM 2021 report, around 9,500 out of more than 11,000 GCoM members have set their emission reduction target. Cities are also reported going faster and progressing far more than the respective NDCs. This shows that cities have an important role in leading emission reduction. Therefore, it is important to build a regional covenant network to share best practices to ensure that all cities are heading in the same direction. In the same report, buildings and transportation became the dominating sectors in emission generation. However, these sectors also have huge potential for emission reduction.
With the degrading environment, cities are more and more vulnerable to taking climate risks. As mentioned above, more than 1,400 high-risk hazards might affect 315 million people. This number has tripled since the last GCoM report in 2019, showing that the number has the probability to increase in the future. Mr. Andy Deacon also mentioned the importance of opening more financial resources to implement climate action as only a small allocation of the national budget is committed to climate finance. To enhance multi-actor cooperation in climate and energy, GCoM has published a multilevel climate action playbook. This playbook not only provides links between regional and national level governments, but also gives support and assistance from GCoM partners such as UCLG, ICLEI, UN-Habitat, UNFCCC, and other partners.
Mr. Yunus Arikan, Director of Global Advocacy from ICLEI, emphasized that after COP26 it is the time for multilevel action to be acknowledged. LGMA has been acting as the focal point for local governments and their relentless advocacy for more than 20 years finally bore positive results during COP26. Multilevel cooperation is acknowledged on Glasgow Climate Pact which acts as a foundation for ICLEI and LGMA for future advocacy on local governments. The setup for new NDCs also opens up opportunities to engage youth and locals in decision-making, once again highlighting the importance of multilevel action.
Despite the achievements in COP26, Mr. Yunus Arikan regrets that COP26 still didn’t respond to the climate emergency. With the upcoming COP27 that will be held in Egypt, ICLEI and LGMA will continue to make multilevel NDCs become real. He also said the need for new NDCs from both global north and south countries with references for local actions and concrete plans in multilevel cooperation. The COP27 is also seen as an opportunity for everyone to have a stronger voice to address the climate emergency. To achieve that, it will require collaborative engagement and ICLEI will continue to facilitate and support future advocacy across the globe.
It is widely known that any kind of climate project will take a huge amount of funding. COP26 also acknowledges the need for climate finance to help developing countries move towards green energy. Ms. Asma Jhina, City Resilience and Climate Advisor of World Bank shared about the city climate finance gap fund initiative by the World Bank to address the city’s lack of resources and capacity to move forward to high-quality low carbon infrastructure projects. This initiative aims to help cities by providing technical assistance to cities and any urban projects to increase the pipeline of high-quality climate-smart urban infrastructure projects.
The session was closed with a research report presentation from Dr. Mahesti Okitasari, Research Associate from UNU Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainability Studies. The research was conducted by UNU-IAS and UCLG ASPAC on the impact of COVID-19 subnational governments to understand their post-pandemic direction. The result shows that despite the pandemic, the subnational governments still pay attention to SDGs and consider them as a pathway to recovery and future development. Due to affected resources, especially financial resources, the governments paid more attention to immediate needs related to SDGs such as SDG 3, 1, and 8. Vertical and horizontal cooperation has also proven beneficial for subnational governments with emphasis on policy coordination, additional resources and support, and cooperation with other stakeholders.
To sum up, all speakers agreed that cities have the potential to contribute to global climate action. However, local governments can’t act alone and it is important for cities to enhance both horizontal and vertical cooperation in achieving its climate target, particularly in emission reduction. With COP26 officially acknowledging the importance of multilevel action, it is a great momentum for us all to collaborate and work together towards a greener and better future.
By KM Team
