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Cities, regions in major five-year vision to take action on climate change

By Chinedum Uwaegbulam
04 January 2016   |   2:26 am
CITIES and regions from five continents representing almost one-fifth of the world’s population have launched a five-year vision that will raise their action to respond to climate change and ensure sustainable future living environments for their people.
Central Lagos recently

Central Lagos recently

Cities, regions, national states, public and private investors and international organizations are together accelerating the transformation at local and regional scale. Subnational authorities are largest group on NAZCA climate commitments platform with over 2200 entries
CITIES and regions from five continents representing almost one-fifth of the world’s population have launched a five-year vision that will raise their action to respond to climate change and ensure sustainable future living environments for their people.

Following the summit of local leaders recently under the Paris Declaration, the Lima to Paris Action Agenda (LPAA) Focus on Cities highlighted the unprecedented level of sub-national government climate action and the wide mobilization of all actors who are joining forces to achieve large-scale transformation across wide territories.

Cities and regions are at the heart of their countries’ economic development and generate a large share of global GDP. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says urban areas are responsible for up to 49 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Cities and regions are also in the frontline of global efforts to protect citizens from the impacts of climate change.

Meeting the internationally agreed goal to keep the global average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius therefore requires a deep transformation of local economic development models.

The world faces the greatest wave of urbanization in its history with 60per cent of the global population expected to live in urban areas by 2030 and 70 per cent by 2050. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity – to lock new urban expansion into a new development model towards climate-resilient and low-carbon societies at large scale, leap frogging the old patterns of urban life for a growing population.

Main goals include: A “Five-Year Vision” to be launched around four objectives mobilizing all actors; increasing the number of cities and regions deciding to implement an Action Plan and climate objectives as well as building resilience in the greatest number of cities and regions, with particular attention to vulnerable populations.

Other objectives are improving project preparation and climate planning to ensure increased financial flows to the territories, but also accelerate the deployment of innovative economic and financial tools; supporting multi-partnership initiatives between different levels of governance (State- local governments, decentralized cooperation).

Local authorities involvement within the climate Action Agenda is increasing fast and reaching all continents: 2,255 cities and 150 regions are already registered on the NAZCA climate commitments platform, representing 17per cent of the world population (1.25 billion inhabitants). Various transformative initiatives are in support of this dynamic:

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