City and Regional Leaders Call for Multilevel Action and Financing to Respond to the Climate Emergency at COP27

Yesterday, 7 November, representatives from Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA), the recognized voice of cities and regions into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  (UNFCCC) climate negotiation process, gathered to advocate and illustrate how multilevel action is critical to achieving climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement.

“LGMA calls on UNFCCC Parties to acknowledge that multilevel action delivers the Paris Agreement, building on the recognition of the multilevel and cooperative action in the Glasgow Climate Pact and the transformative power of sustainable urbanization to respond to climate emergency.” said Yunus Arikan, Director of Global Advocacy, ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and Focal Point for LGMA.

Key asks from Parties at COP27 include: Endorse the Sustainable Urban Resilience for the next Generation (SURGe) Initiative; a multilevel climate governance initiative sponsored by the COP27 Presidency and endorsed by 70+ organizations, focused on five tracks: buildings and housing, urban energy, urban waste/consumption, urban mobility, and urban water.

Leaders from national, subnational, financial, private, academic, NGO sectors are encouraged to endorse the SURGe initiative by completing this form. “I commend the COP27 Presidency for their focus on implementation at the local level through initiatives like SURGe and the first Ministerial on Urbanization. I invite you to support these initiatives and me in my mission to give multi-level action a central position during COP27. If successful, this will be the last COP where cities are not formally recognized voices on the agenda,” said Sharon Dijksma, Mayor of Utrecht, The Netherlands, and LGMA Special Envoy to Ministerials at COP27.

In her capacity as the ICLEI/LGMA Special Envoy for COP27 Ministerials, Mayor Dijksma launched Call to Action: Making multilevel action during COP27 a success at the end of the Daring Cities Forum 2022.

As of 3 November 2022, The Call-To-Action was signed by more than 30 Mayors, other local and subnational leaders and non-state actors. The Call-To-Action will be open until 14 November 2022.

Welcome the first-ever UNFCCC COP27 Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change

“Our local governments are already acting boldly to combat climate change, sometimes with extremely limited means and resources, but these actions need to be scaled via significantly increased and urgent access to finance. Africa needs $7 to $15 billion per year to mitigate impacts of climate change,” said Kobie Brand, Deputy Secretary General, ICLEI, and Regional Director, ICLEI Africa Secretariat.

The LGMA Multilevel Action Pavilion, the home for local and regional governments in the UNFCCC COP27 Blue Zone, has announced over 70 sessions of rich programming and meaningful dialogues showcasing that #MultilevelActionDelivers with support from over 45 organizations.

To view the schedule, click here. To register for events, click here.