- 2024 will likely be the hottest year on record, surpassing the heat record set in 2023. The resulting extreme heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires took a terrible toll in death, global suffering and economic loss.
- The biggest climate change impacts have by far been in the world’s cities. And the world’s cities have responded proactively, becoming climate solution leaders, even as national governments have dragged their feet for nearly three decades.
- If nations and investment banks offered billions in financing to boost climate work now underway in cities, that effort could then be vastly scaled up, said Gregor Robertson, former mayor of Vancouver, Canada, and a special envoy to the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships. This is an exclusive Mongabay interview.
CALI, Colombia — Over the past three decades at annual United Nations climate summits like COP29, which is just concluding in Azerbaijan, delegates have hyperfocused on the need for national governments to regulate global carbon emissions and contribute to the trillions of dollars required to decarbonize world economies.
But the political will and legally binding legislation to achieve these goals has yet to materialize at a scale necessary to slow the rate of global warming. However, a search for alternative solutions is ongoing.
Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver, Canada, has been globetrotting with a powerful message aimed at reluctant world leaders: For the sake of national goals, help cities play a larger role in climate action.
Robertson is a special envoy to CHAMP, the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (launched at the climate summit in Dubai in 2023). The international organization is composed thus far of 74 cities eager to promote cooperation between subnational governments and nations to fund and implement real climate plans, not put forth more unfilled promises.
CHAMP is backed by the much larger Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, for which Robertson is an ambassador. It includes more than 12,500 cities and local governments on six continents in 144 countries representing more than 1 billion people.
An emphasis on cities just makes sense, Robertson said. According to the U.N., cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and produce more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. While they account for less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, they are suffering greater and greater destruction from climate catastrophes, like the massive hurricanes and flooding this fall that devastated Asheville, North Carolina, and Valencia, Spain.
Mayors and governors worldwide are already leading in climate efforts: investing in zero-carbon mass transit, bike lanes, LED street lighting, energy-efficient construction regulations and urban tree planting. But they want to do much more and need the help of national leaders to do it.
“Countries can nearly double their climate ambitions by including city climate plans in their national strategies,” Robertson said at a meeting in Brazil of international mayors and urban leaders Nov. 16. “Investing in greening cities means a more resilient, healthy and sustainable future for everyone.”
At that Rio de Janeiro meeting, mayors from around the globe called for at least $800 billion in annual public investment from national governments and global financial institutions by 2030. That investment, they said, is crucial to scaling up city-level climate projects planetwide, while also promoting healthier, more sustainable urban environments where most people live.
Robertson, who traveled through Africa and Europe this year, also attended the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, COP16, in Cali, Colombia, in October. There, he participated in a daylong session on the role of subnational governments in conserving nature. He spoke with Mongabay after the session concluded.
Mongabay: As mayor of Vancouver from 2008-18, you gained widespread recognition for leading that city’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions, promote sustainability and build a green economy. Help me understand the international efforts you are now leading.
Gregor Robertson: I’m helping elevate the CHAMP initiative on behalf of all the cities and states and regions who want to collaborate and see climate action.
We’re doing everything we can to raise the profile of CHAMP and encourage national governments to follow through and really step up their commitment to cities, states and regions by involving them in the work of their [national] climate and adaptation plans and their biodiversity strategies, and also on finance and implementation.
From a city perspective, it’s all about implementing, making it happen on the ground, and we’re ready to do that in many cities. But we don’t have enough partnerships with national governments or the big public banks. We don’t have enough financing. But the will [of mayors and governors] is there, the climate plans are there, and in many cases, we’re way ahead of what countries are doing.
Mongabay: And that’s what brought you here to COP16, the U.N. biodiversity summit, here in Colombia.
Gregor Robertson: Exactly. I think mayors have a huge commitment that they want to deliver on regarding climate and nature. I’m here because climate and nature are one in the same. We have to integrate all of our work on climate and nature in cities in particular, because cities are the biggest part of the problem on both sides of the equation [in terms of energy consumption, pollution and habitat loss].
Mongabay: As we move into 2025, all the national signatories of the Paris climate agreement are required to file updated NDCs (nationally determined contributions to emission reductions and climate adaptation). How do you see cities fitting into these strategies?
Gregor Robertson: Of the NDCs I’ve seen, only about a quarter of them have strong urban content, yet most pollution is coming from cities. Much of the world’s population lives in cities. We have to solve this crisis in cities. First and foremost, you have willing partners with mayors and their councils. At the governor level, you have many states and provinces that are ready to go faster, like we see in California. There is incredible leadership out there being held back by the countries because of a lack of funds or an inability to work with partners on the ground. So that’s a big question as we head into 2025: Will nations be raising their ambition and including urban content and their NDCs?
I think many of the cities and mayors are saying, ‘We’ll bring solutions to the table. We’ll bring in the private sector. We’ll help deliver your NDCs.’ I mean, how else are they going to deliver these promised reductions?
Mongabay: When you speak about these issues, you are very blunt about what’s at stake for cities as climate impacts intensify around the world.
Gregor Robertson: Cities are getting creamed by climate change and people are dying in unprecedented numbers. People are migrating out of cities that are becoming unlivable. Look, cities are really the first responders in all these disasters. We have to figure out: How are we going to become more resilient? How are we going to protect people and keep them alive when the next hurricane comes, when the next extreme weather event hits with all the floods and the heat? Heat is the number one issue raised by mayors. There are enormous threats to life in many cities now because of heat, particularly in the Global South, where they don’t have the capacity to deal with heat waves.
Three years ago, in a wealthy city like Vancouver, we lost 600 people in two days to an extreme heat wave. That was followed four months later by the biggest flood we’ve ever seen since Vancouver was founded [in 1886], and it cut us off from the rest of North America for many days.
Mongabay: There is so much pressure on wealthy nations to act aggressively on their climate pledges. And here you have mayors and governors shouting that they stand ready to be part of the solution. In many ways, they are already acting. What is keeping more top-down collaboration from happening?
Gregor Robertson: It’s a really good question. I don’t understand the desire to hoard budgets and power and responsibility. You know, when the shit is hitting the fan at a local level, I think some national governments will pay for this politically because these disasters are coming more and more frequently. They’re not getting solved by national government action, and hopefully voters will soon connect the dots on this.
Mongabay: Are there examples where national governments are effectively enabling subnational entities to carry out higher-level climate action?
Gregor Robertson: In the European Union, there are 100 cities right now on a carbon-neutral trajectory by 2030. The EU is providing funding to decarbonize its cities. Across Europe, emissions are coming down.
Many of those countries have invested at the local level to get rid of coal, which is obviously a huge driver of climate change. Now, they are replacing a lot of that with wood [pellets from forest biomass to make energy], so they’ve got a lot more work to do before getting to 100% renewable. But Europe has set a pace that few others have matched in terms of partnerships from continental to the local level, recognizing that everyone has their role to play.
The EU model doesn’t work everywhere. We need different models in North America, Africa and Asia in connecting the dots between levels of government.
Mongabay: Here in Colombia at COP16, the role of subnational governments in protecting biodiversity was given an entire day of discussions. Are you seeing this kind of recognition at the larger climate summits?
Gregor Robertson: Last year we had the first local climate action summit in Dubai [United Arab Emirates at COP28] and cities, mayors and governors were on the main stage.
[Philanthropist and former New York City Mayor] Mike Bloomberg has been a massive supporter of cities and mayors building strength and capacity and helping cross-pollinate between all our cities so we can share our best practices. Cities are really good at stealing ideas from each other. These ideas are transferable. And it saves a lot of time and money.
Mongabay: Overall, you have to see the political will for climate action at the local level as a completely different animal from the political will at the national level.
Gregor Robertson: Yeah, it’s apples and oranges. And that’s the real challenge here: How do you incentivize national governments to shift and invest locally to, you know, create lots of jobs and clean up the mess and, frankly, bolster ourselves from these disasters that are piling on right now. The big worry at a local level is that we’re spending so much more money dealing with climate impacts and having to recover from disasters. We don’t want to be on the reactive side of this for very long. That’s where we are right now, and the cost of those impacts are going to make it really difficult to turn the corner here.
This interview was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Banner image: Cityscape of Seattle, U.S., with trees in the foreground. Image by Luca Micheli via Unsplash (Public domain).
Justin Catanoso, a regular contributor, is a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. His COP16 reporting was supported by the Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability at his university.
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