In climate forums, the focus should shift from negotiation to implementation

Speaking to HT about the efficacy of climate negotiation and its impact on cities in the Global South, Mark Watts, the executive director of C40 Cities — a network of 100 international cities, including five from India – said subnational governments should lead climate action with dynamism, leadership, and a shift in the goalpost. Edited excerpts:

Has the underwhelming outcome of COP 29 derailed the city climate agenda?

It has not derailed city climate action in the sense that there’s so much dynamism and leadership on climate change at the city level—82% of our members are cutting emissions faster than their respective nation-states, and that’s not going to stop.

But Baku was a ‘missed’ opportunity. The $300 billion in climate finance was much smaller than the absolute minimum we needed from a COP.

But there have been some gains for cities. At COP28, 74 countries agreed to develop their new national climate plans in partnership with subnational governments. We see Brazil (Belém), which will host the next COP, taking leadership on that issue.

Baku’s biggest legacy will probably be a significant reform of COPs, so we will see less focus on negotiation between national governments and more on implementation at all levels. This will probably be kicked off by cities coming to the next COP and showing what they’ve done in the last year to deliver against their Paris Agreement-compliant plans. There is a shift in the goalpost.

How is that shift going to happen?

We started seeing it at COP28 when the UAE invited subnational leaders to a massive gathering in the blue zone, an official space with ministers, prime ministers, and presidents at the start of the COP. What I’m arguing should happen is an evolution of that. COP needs to become an implementation forum. Hopefully, it will be delivered at COP30.

Every nation-state will return with a climate plan consistent with the Paris Agreement targets. The C40 cities have had them for many years now. The next stage is reporting what you have done so there’s transparency on the delivery. C40 cities can volunteer to show their progress in the previous year against those targets.

The third and most important thing is, what will you do after understanding where you’re currently not on track? COP could be a useful forum because it gathers businesses, governments, financiers, and civil society.

The $300 billion a year in climate finance to developing countries, starting 2035, is not enough. How does this affect the climate action expected from cities?

The $300 billion amount is far off what’s needed. We estimate that by 2030, cities alone will need $800 billion a year in public investment, and $300 billion will cover only a fraction of that. However, keeping alive the principle that countries that are currently the wealthiest have done the most to cause the climate crisis and should now make money available for clean development and resilience of the Global South is important. Particularly in the context of the US elections, where one would assume now that the United States will be far less generous if it gives any money to international climate finance.

Are other countries likely to follow the US and drag their feet on climate financing?

It makes it harder, but in the end, there’s self-interest in this. Europe will invest anyway and will support clean development in the Global South. It is interesting to look at the scale of investment that China is now making. Greening the Belt and Road will probably be the most significant unilateral action.

China is quite rightly not willing to change its status from when the Paris Agreement was signed to when it was a developing nation and not responsible for causing the climate crisis. However, China voluntarily invests and provides more support for the Global South.

How can cities access multilateral funds directly, especially if the national and subnational governments are not politically aligned?

It has been a perennial problem that cities can’t directly access funding from multilateral banks, but this is changing. At a gathering of senior leaders of six or seven leading multilateral development banks in Washington around the World Bank Forum last year, which C40 hosted, we pitched for dedicated Green City programmes from the banks and some ability to overcome the need for a sovereign guarantee when there’s a political disagreement between city and nation-state.

We’ve received responses from all the banks, saying they want to work with us to resolve this over the next 18 months. One of them, the Inter-American Development Bank has already signed an MoU with C40 for a dedicated Green Cities programme and is trying to find a way to provide a guarantee where the sovereign guarantee isn’t there.

Last year, the UN Capital Development Fund announced a green-cities guarantee fund, starting in 2025, with 150 million euros of funding from the European Union. It is a small amount but the first of its kind. The UN fund is specifically for African countries and Indonesia, while the Inter-American Development Bank is for Latin America. The city agenda is part of the general reform of the development banks to focus on climate change. We’ve also been lobbying hard to ensure the loss and damage fund (operationalised last year) receives a specific city component. It has yet to happen.

C40 efforts are mainly focused on collaborating with mayors and city leaders. In India, local governments are not adequately empowered to make decisions and implement plans because they have little control over municipal functions and finances. Planning, budgeting, and implementation are key to climate action. Who do you talk to in the absence of decisive city leadership?

We have changed our rules due to the governance system in India. Under C40’s rules, the mayor must be a member, attend, and engage in the process personally. For the reasons you say, we’ve recognised that in most of our member cities here, the mayor is not the person who will be working with us. We’ve amended our rules so that the city chooses, and quite often, the municipal commissioner has significant power, responsibility and budgets. But sometimes, it might be representative of the state environmental secretary.

It’s a bit confusing compared to other jurisdictions, such as the United States or Europe, where it’s very clear there’s a mayor who is the chief executive and the political leader. But it’s not an obstacle to Indian cities being engaged in C40. We operate differently here than we do in Europe or North America, and we operate differently in China as well. So, there isn’t one model.

What are the strengths and what are the weak links in Indian cities as far as climate action goes?

I see strengths relative to the other countries in the Global South where our work is. There is a deep-rooted appreciation of the benefits of planning, having a clear plan that a whole bureaucracy owns, which I think is critical to climate action. Therefore, you see here a big take-up of climate action plans at a local level, and climate budgeting is being taken up at a local level faster than in other parts of the world.

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There’s extraordinary dynamism in the Indian economy, which is why we’re seeing the extremely fast rollout of electric vehicles in certain cities, in Mumbai in particular. Once a good idea is in place and the bureaucracy has planned it out, things move quickly.

The weakness is the relatively limited powers, particularly the limited tax-raising or budgetary powers. That’s the big weakness of Indian cities compared to some of the world. But we found that, in some places, it’s possible to work at a state level across a large number of cities simultaneously. That’s a great strength.

Are adaptation and resilience, which are at the heart of climate action in cities, getting the priority and finances they need?

In the global south, the biggest demand for support is around adaptation, whether water or heat. Our fastest-growing programmes are all about resilience. Philanthropy has started to shift its funding (to these programmes). Unfortunately, the big capital and multilateral funding have lagged in adaptation. It is still a tiny fraction of overall climate support.

Why is setting quantifiable targets for adaptation becoming so difficult?

Success in relation to resilience is hard to quantify compared to emissions, which is pretty straightforward. Did they go down or up, and did they go down fast enough? We’re working on that. Direct investment is challenging if success is difficult to measure. We must start with simple things, such as the UN secretary-general’s initiative to have early warning systems for flooding, heat, and extreme weather in every country (by 2027). We would apply it to every city in the world. That’s an easy-to-measure metric and the absolute baseline for resilience.

Are you hopeful that countries will include the urban climate agenda as prominently as they should in their updated nationally determined contributions?

One great example is Brazil’s new NDC, launched at COP 29, with a tougher emission reduction target. Climate federalism has also been built into the plan. They’ve created a federally funded Green Resilient Cities programme focusing on jobs and transition. A significant investment is made in electric buses in cities in Brazil. At the top of the process sits a commission that the president’s office convenes with governors, mayors, and the different ministries. It’s a great model.

Also, a big blue box is part of their plan, which talks about the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships or CHAMP. An initiative the United Arab Emirates COP presidency launched last year, it’s a commitment by 74 countries that when they develop their new national climate plans and their NDCs, and most importantly when they implement them, they will do so in partnership with subnational layers of government.

CHAMP is important because it will likely strengthen and accelerate the delivery of the climate plans. As we know, cities are cutting emissions faster. 82% of C40 cities will cut their emissions faster than their respective nation states because this will create a more joined-up approach across governments. The UK, UAE, and Brazil have released new Paris-compliant plans, and CHAMP has been built into them… We’ve got to move incredibly fast to tackle climate breakdown; the only way to do that is to collaborate. And that’s what’s holding us back at the moment.

There is a general feeling that the entire climate agenda is stuck in protocols going back and forth in forums such as COP while people are already dying, losing homes and livelihoods while facing the worst of climate crises. Do you agree?

There’s an extraordinary unreality about how intergovernmental climate negotiation occurs. The word “target” is often the problem. If we don’t meet them, it doesn’t matter. We’ll set a new target, a different target. But science is telling us that we have no time left to make massive societal changes to protect the future of our species and many other species. I find the unreal in reality hard to deal with.

The fear of climate breakdown hasn’t worked as a motivator for most people. I think it should be for political leaders because they are in the privileged position to have the absolute best and clearest data in front of them. They know that we’re really on the edge of a tipping point that it will be impossible to come back from with the technology that we currently have available to us. We must halve the world’s emissions in the next five years. It’s an extraordinary task. And yet we blithely talk about this as if it’s just another target.