The partnership will help cities accelerate current actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to climate change.
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), a group of 40 large cities tackling climate change, and the World Bank have formed a groundbreaking partnership that will help cities accelerate current actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to climate change.
C40 Chair New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick signed the agreement during the C40 Cities Mayors Summit in São Paulo, Brazil.
“The World Bank has a long history of working in urban areas to promote economic development to overcome poverty and more recently to address climate change,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick.
“This agreement will help us work with C40 cities to integrate growth planning with climate change adaptation and mitigation, with special attention to the vulnerabilities of the urban poor.”
The key objective of this new partnership is to enable megacities to expand mitigation and adaptation actions and at the same time, strengthen and protect economies, reduce poverty and protect vulnerable populations. It addresses structural issues that make it difficult for cities to finance climate actions that have been identified by both C40 Cities and the World Bank Group.
As part of the mutual agreement, the C40 and the World Bank will establish:
- A consistent approach to climate action plans and strategies in large cities to enable stronger partnerships between cities on shared climate goals, and to permit potential investors to identify opportunities across cities. The lack of a standard approach or process – such as exists for national government action plans – has made it difficult for investors and grantors to assess city action plans and thus has made them reluctant to fund projects.
- A common approach to measuring and reporting on city greenhouse gas emissions to allow verifiable and consistent monitoring of emissions reductions, identify actions that result in the greatest emission reductions, and facilitate access to carbon finance. This is necessary because carbon finance requires quantitative assessments of impacts, but currently no single standard for reporting citywide carbon emissions exists; the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Measurement for Management report identified several different protocols in use by C40 cities, with no single protocol used by a majority.
Both the C40 and the World Bank will direct resources expressly to this partnership to ensure its implementation, sustainability and long-term success.
More about the World Bank-C40 Partnership
Cities Alliance, the World Bank, UNEP and UN-HABITAT are also working together to produce tools, programming and resources for cities as they respond to climate change through a Joint Work Programme on Cities and Climate Change. Read a brochure about UNEP and Cities Alliance.
