The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (Alliance) is the largest multilevel and multi-stake-holder coalition working towards the objective of closing the investment gap for urban subnational climate projects and infrastructure worldwide. In particular, the Alliance´s Project Preparation Action Group (PPAG) is committed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among all stakeholders working in the field of sustainable urban development towards the empowerment of local governments to develop bankable projects and access finance.
Acknowledging the need of a stronger focus on early stage project development, and of an improved coordination between existing initiatives on a country basis, the 2019 Alliance Knowledge Product was an «Assessment of CCFLA’s value chain for early stage project preparation in Mexico», a country where most of the PPAG members are active. Findings of this study and the goals of the Leadership for Urban Climate Investment (LUCI) served as the basis for this workshop.
The Forum served as a platform to convene local, regional and national government representatives, as well as the international and national finance community and Project Preparation Facilities (PPF) providers to:
- Improve collaboration and knowledge exchange between the different levels of actors and initiatives that have and are currently working with local and regional governments in Mexico.
- Contribute to a better understanding of local needs for preparing bankable climate resilient and low emission urban projects.
- Strengthen the collaboration between the Alliance PPAG local representatives.
- Increase the visibility of local projects supported by the Alliance members, showing them to the national and international finance community.
- Define joint activities to initiate and reinforce a multilevel collaboration and coordination within Alliance membership and beyond in Mexico.
- Contribute to localize the Alliance PPAG Work plan enabling it to feed into the LUCI initiative.
More than 300 participants attended the three-day event (see Annex I Agenda of the event and Figure 1 Event sessions overview) which covered several topics, starting from the current work of PPF providers, challenges and solutions regarding project financing, as well as the services and opportunities offered by national and international financial institutions for urban development in Mexico (day I); following with in-depth group discussions between all participants to enhance their collaboration and set joint activities in different pathways, and a special session dedicated to exchange project preparation practices with a
thematic focus (day II); concluding with the presentation of 12 projects proposals from diverse regions of the country. This report aims not only summarizing what happened at the different sessions, but also to reflect the shortcomings of subnational governments developing robust projects and accessing finance, inviting for next steps and collaboration between the different actors.
