Early engagement and co-benefits strengthen cities’ climate commitments

O'Garra, Tanya /Viktoriya Kuz / Andrew Deneault / Christopher Orr / Sander Chan
External Publications (2024)

in: Nature Cities, first published 19.03.2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00052-6
Open access

Cities can lead the way in tackling climate change through robust climate actions (that is, measures taken to limit climate change or its impacts). However, escalating crises due to pandemics, conflict and climate change pose challenges to ambitious and sustained city climate action. Here we use global data on 793 cities from the Carbon Disclosure Project 2021 platform to assess how the COVID-19 crisis has affected cities’ reported climate commitments and actions and the factors associated with these impacts. We find climate actions persist despite funding shortfalls; yet only 43% of cities have implemented green recovery interventions. Co-benefits of climate action (for example, health outcomes) and early engagement on sustainability issues (for example, via climate networks) are associated with sustained climate action and finance during COVID-19 and green recovery interventions. Cities should strengthen sustainability co-benefits and relationships with coalitions of actors to support durable climate commitments during crises.

Early engagement and co-benefits strengthen cities’ climate commitments

About the author

Deneault, Andrew

Further experts

Aleksandrova, Mariya

Baumann, Max-Otto

Brandi, Clara

Breuer, Anita

Dick, Eva

Dippel, Beatrice

Donnelly, Aiveen

Ekoh, Susan S.

El-Haddad, Amirah

Fasold, Maximilian

Fuhrmann-Riebel, Hanna

Goedeking, Nicholas

Haldenwang, Christian von

Houdret, Annabelle

Kativu, Saymore Ngonidzashe

Lehmann, Ina

Leininger, Julia

Malerba, Daniele

Mathis, Okka Lou

Morare, Ditebogo Modiegi

Never, Babette

Nowack, Daniel

Pegels, Anna

Rodríguez de Francisco, Jean Carlo

Roll, Michael

Srigiri, Srinivasa Reddy

Contact