New Delhi: As cities around the world face the growing impacts of the climate crisis, with each season proving more erratic than the last, the latest edition of the UN’s annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan I was left very little. The urgent needs of climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels.
Speaking to HT about the efficacy of climate talks and its impact on cities in the Global South, Mark Watts, executive director of C40 Cities – a network of 100 international cities including five from India – said subnational governments need to lead climate action. Must change dynamics, leadership, and goalposts. Edited excerpts:
Have the disappointing results of COP 29 derailed the city’s climate agenda?
It has not derailed the city’s climate action in the sense that there is so much dynamism and leadership on climate change at the city level – 82% of our members are cutting emissions faster than their respective nation-states, and This is not going to stop.
But Baku was a ‘missed’ opportunity. $300 billion in climate finance was far below the minimum amount required for the COP.
But cities have got some benefits. At COP28, 74 countries agreed to develop their new national climate plans in partnership with subnational governments. We see that Brazil (Belém), which will host the next COP, will take the lead on that issue.
Baku’s greatest legacy will likely be a significant reform of the COP, so we will focus less on negotiations between national governments and more on implementation at all levels. This will likely be initiated by cities coming to the next COP and showing what they have done over the past year to work in line with their Paris Agreement-compliant plans. There has been a change in the goalpost.
How is that change going to happen?
We began to see this at COP28 when the UAE invited subnational leaders to a massive gathering in the Blue Zones, an official space, with ministers, prime ministers, and presidents at the start of the COP. This is a development of what I am arguing should happen. The COP needs to become an implementing platform. Hopefully, it will be delivered at COP30.
Each nation-state will return with a climate plan consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement. These have been present in C40 cities for many years. The next step is to report what you have done so that there is transparency in delivery. C40 cities can volunteer to show their progress over the past year against those targets.
Third and most importantly, what will you do after realizing that you are not on the right path at the moment? The COP can be a useful forum as it brings together businesses, governments, financiers and civil society.
$300 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries through 2035 is not enough. How does this affect the climate action expected from cities?
The amount of $300 billion is far from what is needed. We estimate that by 2030, cities alone will need $800 billion per year in public investment, and $300 billion will meet only a fraction of that. However, it is important to keep alive the principle that the countries that are currently the wealthiest have done the most to create the climate crisis and should now provide funding for the clean growth and resilience of the global South. Particularly in the context of the US elections, where one would now assume that the United States would be much less generous if it commits any money to international climate finance.
Are other countries likely to follow the US and drag their feet on climate financing?
It makes it difficult, but in the end, it’s all selfishness. Europe will invest anyway and support clean development in the Global South. It is interesting to see the scale at which China is investing now. Greening the Belt and Road will probably be the most important unilateral action.
China is absolutely right that it is unwilling to change its position from the time the Paris Agreement was signed to now, when it was a developing country and not responsible for causing the climate crisis. However, China willingly invests and provides more support for the Global South.
How can cities directly access multilateral funds, especially if national and subnational governments are not politically united?
It has been a perennial problem that cities cannot access funding directly from multilateral banks, but this is changing. Last year at a gathering of senior leaders of the six or seven leading multilateral development banks in Washington around the World Bank Forum, hosted by the C40, we had some capacity to address the need for dedicated green city programs and sovereign guarantees from the banks. Had advocated. There is a political disagreement between the city and the nation-state.
We have received responses from all banks stating that they want to work with us to resolve this over the next 18 months. One of them, the Inter-American Development Bank, has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the C40 for a dedicated green cities program and is trying to find a way to provide guarantees where there are no sovereign guarantees.
Last year, the UN Capital Development Fund announced a green-cities guarantee fund, starting in 2025, with 150 million euros of funding from the EU. This is a small amount but the first of its kind. The United Nations Fund is specifically for African countries and Indonesia, while the Inter-American Development Bank is for Latin America. The city agenda is part of a general reform of development banks to focus on climate change. We are also lobbying hard to ensure that the Loss and Damage Fund (in operation last year) gets a specific city component. This is yet to happen.
C40’s efforts primarily focus on collaborating with mayors and city leaders. In India, local governments are not empowered enough to take decisions and implement plans as they have little control over municipal functions and finances. Planning, budgeting and implementation are the keys to climate action. In the absence of decisive city leadership, who do you talk to?
Due to the governance system in India, we have changed our rules. Under C40’s rules, the mayor must be a member, participate and be personally involved in the process. For the reasons you said, we recognized that in most of our member cities, the mayor is not the person who will work with us. We have amended our rules so that the city can elect, and often does not, the municipal commissioner, who has significant power, responsibility and budget. But sometimes, it may be a representative of the State Environment Secretary.
This is a bit confusing compared to other jurisdictions such as the United States or Europe, where it is very clear that there is a mayor who is the chief executive and political leader. But this is not a hindrance for Indian cities to join C40. We work differently here than in Europe or North America, and we also work differently in China. So, there is no one model.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Indian cities as far as climate action is concerned?
I see strengths compared to other countries in the Global South where we have work. The benefits of the plan are deeply appreciated, there is a clear plan that the entire bureaucracy has, which I think is important for climate action. So, you are seeing a greater share of climate action plans here at the local level, and climate budgets are being taken up at the local level at a faster rate than in other parts of the world.
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The Indian economy has extraordinary dynamism, which is why we are seeing extremely rapid adoption of electric vehicles in some cities, especially Mumbai. Once a good idea comes up and the bureaucracy plans on it, things move forward rapidly.
The weakness is relatively limited powers, especially limited tax-raising or budgetary powers. This is a major weakness of Indian cities compared to some cities of the world. But we found that, in some places, it is possible to work at the state level in a large number of cities simultaneously. This is a huge power.
Are adaptation and resilience, which are at the heart of climate action in cities, getting the priority and necessary finance?
In the Global South, the greatest demand for support is around adaptation, whether water or heat. Our fastest growing programs are based on flexibility. Philanthropy has started to shift its funding (to these programs). Unfortunately, big capital and multilateral financing have lagged behind in adaptation. This is still a small fraction of overall climate support.
Why is it becoming so difficult to set quantitative targets for adaptation?
It is harder to measure success in terms of resilience than emissions, which is much more straightforward. Did they go down or up, and did they go down fast enough? We are working on it. Direct investment is challenging if success is difficult to measure. We should start with simple things, like the UN Secretary-General’s initiative to create early warning systems for floods, heat waves and extreme weather in every country (by 2027). We will implement it in every city of the world. This is an easy metric to measure and an absolute baseline for resilience.
Do you expect countries to include the urban climate agenda as prominently as they should in their updated Nationally Determined Contributions?
A great example of this is Brazil’s new NDC, which was launched at COP 29 with tough emissions reduction targets. Climate federalism is also included in the plan. They have created a federally funded Green Resilient Cities program focusing on jobs and transformation. Brazilian cities have made significant investments in electric buses. At the top of the process sits a commission convened by the office of the President along with governors, mayors and various ministries. This is an excellent model.
Also, a big blue box is part of their plan, which talks about the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnership, or CHAMP. An initiative launched last year by the UAE COP Presidency, it is a commitment by 74 countries to support governments as they develop their new national climate plans and their NDCs, and most importantly, as they implement them. We will do this in partnership with the subnational layers of the ,
CHAMP is important because it will potentially strengthen and speed up the delivery of climate plans. As we know, cities are cutting emissions rapidly. 82% of C40 cities would cut their emissions faster than their respective nation states because of a more joined-up approach between governments. The UK, UAE and Brazil have released new Paris-compliant plans, and CHAMP is built into them… We must move incredibly fast to tackle climate change; The only way to do this is to collaborate. And this is what is holding us back right now.
There is a common perception that the entire climate agenda is stuck in back-and-forth protocols at forums like the COP, while people are already dying, losing their homes and livelihoods, facing the worst climate crisis. Do you agree?
There is an extraordinary falsity about how intergovernmental climate negotiations take place. The word “goal” is often the problem. It doesn’t matter if we don’t meet them. We will set a new goal, a different goal. But science is telling us that we are running out of time to make large-scale social change to protect the future of our species and many other species. I find it hard to deal with the unreality of reality.
Fears about climate change have not served as a motivator for most people. I think it should be for political leaders because they are in the privileged position of having the best and clearest data in front of them. They know that we are truly on the edge of a tipping point where it will be impossible to return with the technology we currently have. we have to halve it world emissions In the next five years. This is an extraordinary work. And yet we talk about it as if it’s just another goal.
