Localising the NDCs in cities and regions

Cities and regions have a unique capacity to address climate change compared with national governments. However, their crucial role in climate action is currently not clearly linked or integrated into nationally determined contributions (NDC).Although previous global climate discussions, including the recently adopted Glasgow Climate Pact have recognised an urgent need for multilevel and cooperative action, very little concrete actions have been taking place to integrate cities’ and regions’ action into the NDCs.

Previous work by the OECD, UN-Habitat, University of Southern Denmark, Climate Action Data 2.0 (CAD2.0) workgroup and many other institutions identify several factors.

First, national governments do not sufficiently consider geographical disparities across regions and cities within the country into their NDCs or Long-Term Strategies.

Second, despite the increasing number of local and regional climate action initiatives, current efforts to tackle climate at the subnational-level often remain uncoordinated with national governments or surrounding cities and regions, which impedes cities and regions to leverage their full potential to make a significant difference in transitioning to the zero-carbon economy and strengthening their resilience.

This networking event aims at bringing together international experts to discuss concrete actions to address these challenges.

In particular, the event focuses on the following potential avenues going forward:

• Sharing the latest evidence of how NDCs and other related policies integrate subnational climate action, based on research conducted by participating partners (e.g. National Urban Policies and Subnational Climate finance from the OECD and the updated analysis of the urban content of NDCs realized by UN-Habitat and the University of Southern Denmark).

• Identifying and bridging the research gap. In particular to: (i) level integration of subnational climate action in NDCs; (ii) effectiveness of co-ordination mechanisms across levels of government; (iii) monitoring the impacts of national support (i.e. financial and technical assistance) to subnational government climate action.

• Establishing an expert group / task force to monitor the progress and discuss solutions to enhance subnational climate action integration into the NDCs. OECD’s ongoing programme on a Territorial Approach to Climate Action and Resilience can provide such a platform.

• Raising awareness and obtaining political buy-in on the national-subnational integration agenda, by facilitating dialogues in several international conferences after WUF11 (e.g. COP27).