Climate-Smart Urban Planning Legislation

Urban areas account for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, making them major contributors to climate change. They also stand to be severely affected by the negative impacts associated with climate change. Cities are already suffering from extreme weather events, flooding, subsidence, storms, heat waves, water scarcity, droughts, and sea-level rise among other climate change effects.

Considering that 55 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, projected to increase to 68 per cent by 2050, cities represent the main battleground for climate change action. Of the 2.5 billion people expected to live in cities in the next three decades, 90 per cent of them will be in Asia and Africa.

This training promotes strengthened environmental reviews in urban development processes which will support the creation of policy frameworks to protect and safeguard the world's natural heritage, improve air quality and municipal waste management, mitigate, and adapt to climate change and improve resilience to disasters (SDG goal 11) and develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels (SDG goal 16).

This training also supports the New Urban Agenda and SDG 13 which call for integration of climate change in policy formulation. This offers an entry point for city involvement in climate change action, including through the establishment of supportive legal frameworks.

Through this training event, participants will learn about the Law and Climate Change Toolkit and its Urban Planning module which includes consideration of climate change law at all levels of urban planning (national, subnational and municipal). Through its assessment process, the module allows for broad examination of a wide array of urban planning legislation that considers opportunities for stakeholder participation.

This training is key for national and local government officials, policy and climate change experts, lawyers, academia, community leaders and civil society organizations.