The Ministerial Level Meeting on Climate and Urbanization Will Take Place on Thursday  

TEXT: Sibel BÜLAY

Within the year, ICLEI and other multinational organizations dedicated to cities and regions prepare for the annual COP Meetings. They work towards the formal inclusion of subnational governments in the COP process. Believing that multilevel action is required to deliver the Paris Agreement. To this end they have evaluated NDCs, Loss and Damage, the climate emergency focusing on consolidating them into an action oriented agenda.  

And they work to get specific items on the COP agenda. This year SURGe (Sustainable Urban Resilience for the next Generation) is under discussion. For the last 10 years there has been an effort to bring the climate and urban communities together. Finally, the Ministerial Level Meeting on Climate and Urbanization will take place on Thursday.   

In 2009 at COP 15 in Copenhagen, developed countries decided to commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions.  The funding was to come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral.  This commitment has been reiterated at subsequent COPs but, two years past the target date of 2020, the funds have still not been made available.  This issue is eroding trust in the countries which pledged to provide the funds.  And trust in the process, include any future agreements which will be reached. 

The war in Ukraine has also proven to be particularly disruptive as it is driving nations back to the use of coal, and has become a threat to food security. During his speech at the opening session of COP27,   Egypt’s president   El-Sisi appealed for an end the Russian-Ukrainian war.   

The topic of Loss and Damage is now officially on the agenda. Simply being on the agenda may not sound impressive, but politically it signifies the willingness of all nations to discuss the issue, which is a big achievement by the COP process standards.  

The global stocktake process, part of the Paris Agreement process is underway. (I will write about this in detail.)  The good news for cities and regions is the LGMA has persuaded the decision-makers that the stocktake process should also be conducted at the local level, introducing a bottom-up approach.

The topic of finance is a focus area of this COP and there are many different subtopics being addressed. One of these, concerning cities and regions, is how to fund major urban development projects using climate funds. The proposed solution is for Sustainable urbanization to be included funded through the non-market mechanism.  The Global Finance Architecture is not working for us (cities and regions.). There are calls for it to be redesigned.