Jennifer Perratt

Why the Local Climate Action Summit is important

The Local Climate Action Summit (LCAS), hosted by the COP presidency and Bloomberg Philanthropies (a global charity), brought together hundreds of subnational leaders – including local government, businesses, and NGOs – to discuss how local efforts and multi-level partnerships between local and national leaders can improve global climate action. The summit ran from 1-2 December, early in the COP28 schedule, so that findings generated could feed into talks later in the conference, namely the Ministerial Meeting on Urbanisation and Climate Change on December 6. The summit was centred on four themes:

1. Transforming local climate finance

2. Integrating local action into national and international climate policy design and goals

3. Speeding up the local energy transition

4. Strengthening local resilience

The summit was the first time that the COP presidency hosted discussions specifically for subnational stakeholders. In addition, this COP was the first time a delegation of mayors and governors were present at the World Climate Action Summit – suggesting that subnational climate leaders’ ideas and concerns are beginning to be recognised as a crucial element of global climate action. But why is subnational leadership so important? And what new knowledge has this summit generated (and could future similar summits generate) compared to COP’s traditionally national-level discussions?

The summit as a potential spotlight for subnational action and knowledge

The summit allowed subnational governments to share best practices of how they’ve achieved this. A previous summit for subnational climate leadership has already proven that a space tailored to local action can be beneficial. The Climate Summit for Local Leaders (CSLL), hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies during (but not officially connected to) COP21 was a predecessor of the LCAS. This gave subnational governments a structured opportunity to compare progress and advice with each other. Many attending mayors felt capable of more ambitious climate action due to the summit, and as a result, hundreds of them declared their commitment to The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCOM). This Covenant committed mayors to creating climate targets, plans, emissions reporting, and climate risk assessments for their cities. Since then, more than 12,500 governments have committed to such plans (The Climate Group, 2023).

The LCAS could do the same, but with an official remit from the COP presidency and a more inclusive range of places and leaders. The CSt was limited to city mayors, and only partnered with C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), ICLEl and UCLG – coalitions which work only with city and local governments. In comparison, the LCAS extended invitations beyond mayors, and invited more progressive coalitions such as the Under2 Coalition and America Is All In. The former is a group of particularly ambitious subnational governments who have reduced their emissions by 16% on average from 1990 to 2015, while global average emissions rose by 42% in the same period (Owen-Burge, 2021). The latter is a coalition which actively involves indigenous leaders and faith groups, in contrast to the aforementioned coalitions. This expanded inclusion brought knowledge from a broader range of places and non-governmental leaderships. Lastly, the CSLL was also hosted outside of COP proceedings, while the LCAS was hosted formally within COP, giving a greater public spotlight to the importance of multi-level climate governance.

The summit was less contentious than national level proceedings

COP talks have at times been stalled by more climate vulnerable or progressive nations using their leverage to push their less progressive counterparts. For instance, at the Bonn Climate Change

Conference in June this year, developing nations refused to increase their climate mitigation ambitions unless the failure of countries to deliver on promised climate finance was also addressed. Furthermore, it is predicted that at this COP, EU and climate vulnerable nations will strongly push for all nations to agree to entirely phase out fossil fuels, rather than the phase down (i.e. reduction but not removal) which is preferred by nations that still heavily rely on fossil fuels. Some nations may even refuse to sign a commitment to renewable energy if the phase out terminology is not unanimously adopted. Highly contentious issues like phase out vs phase down were avoided entirely at this summit, instead being left for national discussions. This may be because subnational governments tend to be more ambitious than their national governments – so they may be willing to be more progressive than national delegations on such issues.

The summit as a missed opportunity to improve climate financing for subnational regions

Despite the clear benefits of this summit, a retrospective analysis reveals that its speakers did not discuss how subnational governments could improve climate financing for more vulnerable regions. Less than 17% of international climate adaptation finance distributed now was allocated specifically to local community projects (Canales and Savvidou, 2023). As for financing for climate-related loss and damage recovery, the ‘loss and damage fund’ to be discussed at COP28 is expected to run into disagreement, with the idea of mandatory contributions to the fund expected to be a point of contention. It is therefore crucial to pursue other forms of loss and damage funding in the meantime.

Not only could subnational leaders at the summit have used this international platform to highlight the need for more localised finance, but attendees could have explored how to provide the funding themselves. There is precedent for transnational funding between cities (rather than between nations): earlier this year, C40 established the Inclusive Climate Action Cities Fund. This fund provides funding for climate mitigation and adaptation to six C40 member cities, many of whom have struggled to find funding elsewhere as they do not qualify as the most ‘climate vulnerable’ cities, such as Warsaw. At the LCAS, C40 could have shared their expertise on establishing this fund so that subnational governments in attendance could agree to a similar initiative involving cities or regions outside of the C40.

The summit missed an opportunity for youth engagement

All speakers at the LCAS were from government and media, including UN representatives, Special Envoys for Climate Change, mayors, and governors. Although it is of course an achievement that local leaders have finally been given an official space at COP, there was a conspicuous lack of perspectives from youth leaders at this summit.

Youth participants are conducting ground-breaking work outside official proceedings in the Green Zone, which is the ‘public’ side where anyone can speak and hear discussions. In comparison, the Blue Zone is the ‘official’ side where negotiations are held in closed discussions among UN-approved delegates and observers only). A group of young observers, for instance, launched the Future Generations Tribunal, an international moral tribunal that aims to highlight and solve the lack of legally binding mechanisms that hold people accountable for a liveable planet. Green Zone discussions are less likely to reach the biggest decision-makers, as they reserve their time for the official Blue Zone discussions. The LCAS missed a unique opportunity to highlight such young people’s perspectives on how current systems of governance fail to capture the climate issue – an opinion that could have constructively critiqued the other speakers’ perspectives from within the system.

Young climate leaders have a lived experience of working on local climate action, which makes them a wealth of knowledge for local government leaders. Furthermore, these leaders have a vested interest in pursuing solutions with the best long-term outcome rather than preserving existing systems, as evidenced by the Future Generations Tribunal, as their generation will be living with the

consequences of today’s actions. The exclusion of youth voices suggests that youth climate activists are justified in their growing disenchantment of COP as a productive platform for climate action. Greta Thunberg has called COP a greenwashing exercise, while Ayisha Siddiqa, a Youth Climate Advisor to the UN Secretary General, states that COP has obvious limitations for needed climate action.

Looking beyond the summit

As the recent UNEP (2023) report Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record – Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again) points out, progress with national-level climate governance has been too slow to reach the Paris Agreement 1.5°C pathway and 2°C pathway. Many countries failed to meet their NDCs in the Global Stocktake, and there are ongoing issues with the aforementioned loss and damage’ fund, which was proposed a decade ago.

Perhaps the LCAS is an indication that the UN is starting to embrace polycentric governance of climate change, and recognises that the historic top-down, national-level approach is not sufficient. Some discussions and agreements are more productive, agile, and progressive on a sub-national level. If this summit produces long term successful outcomes, we could see future COPs embracing sub-national climate leadership more enthusiastically.

Bibliography

Canales and Savvidou, 2023. Guest post: Three major gaps in climate-adaptation finance for developing countries, Carbon Brief website, accessed 30 November 2023. Available at https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-three-major-gaps-in-climate-adaptation-finance-for-developing-countries/ Owen-Burge, 2021. Under 2 Coalition, UNFCC website, accessed 30 November 2023. Available at https://climatechampions.unfccc.int/team_member/under-2-coalition/

The Climate Group, 2023. COP28 President-Designate Sultan Al Jaber and UN Special Envoy Michael Bloomberg announce first COP-hosted ‘Local Climate Action Summit’, The Climate Group website, accessed 2 December 2023. Available at https://www.theclimategroup.org/our-work/news/cop28-president-designate-sultan-al-jaber-and-un-special-envoy-michael-bloomberg

UNEP, 2023. Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record – Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again), UNEP website, accessed 3 November 2023. Available at https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2023