Author: Alastair Mayes

Introduction

Taking place alongside the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and UN Summit of the Future, New York Climate Week (NYCW) brought together over 100,000 people to discuss some of society’s most pressing issues. It is appropriate that cities—who are drivers of the climate crisis but also leaders of the fight against it—took center stage in the proceedings held against the backdrop of one of the world’s most iconic urban centers.

Leading global mayors, including Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn, Mayor of Freetown Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, and Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, showcased their cities’ solutions to the climate crisis to stakeholders from across government, the private sector, and civil society during a week of knowledge exchange and collaboration to drive urban climate action.

CCFLA at New York Climate Week

For the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA), NYCW 2024 held special significance as it marked ten years since its inception at the UNGA in 2014 and five years since Climate Policy Initiative became its Secretariat. CCFLA’s Annual Assembly marked these milestones and provided a forum for CCFLA Members to collaborate and network in person in order to support our collective aim of accelerating urban climate finance.

For the first time in 2024, CCFLA Members were invited to take the lead at the Assembly by bringing forward the most pressing topics to further our mission and support cities to access climate finance. This call was answered enthusiastically with Member-led sessions driving insightful conversations around four key themes:

1. Urban climate finance at COP29
   • UN-Habitat and the COP29 Presidency shared their plans for advancing urban climate finance discussions in Baku this November. The Presidency shared its Multisectoral Actions Pathways (MAP) for Resilient and Healthy Cities Declaration and emphasized a commitment to ensuring continuity with previous initiatives and connectivity with other important urban fora.
2. De-risking private investment in cities through guarantees
   • Green Finance Institute led a rich discussion on the role of guarantees in mobilizing private investment for urban climate infrastructure projects. With valuable inputs from the SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance and UNCDF, there was consensus around the need for greater collaboration on guarantees designed for cities.
3. Innovative financing mechanism to unlock urban climate finance
   • Bankers without Boundaries and Connected Places Catapult shared success stories from the UK and Europe in supporting cities to access finance through innovative financing mechanisms. With further examples shared by the Global Infrastructure Facility and Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, this session showcased the exciting work that Members are doing globally to accelerate urban climate finance.

4. Matchmaking throughout the project preparation lifecycle

1. • GIZ led a session on the importance of matchmaking in the project preparation lifecycle, sharing success stories from South Africa and Kenya and highlighting the importance of CCFLA’s PPF Connector for facilitating matchmaking, and leading Members in a fishbowl discussion on how to improve matchmaking going forward.

The CCFLA Assembly also saw the launch of the 2024 State of Cities Climate Finance report, the most comprehensive assessment published to date of urban climate finance flows and, for the first time, urban climate finance needs. The report tracked USD 831 billion of climate finance flowing to cities annually as of 2021/22, triple the figure tracked in 2017/18. While representing significant progress, this remains far below cities’ estimated needs, standing at USD 4.5 trillion annually until 2030 and rising to USD 6 trillion per year from 2031 to 2050.

How was urban climate finance advanced elsewhere at NYCW?

Elsewhere at NYCW, urban climate finance was a key discussion point at many events, with the following key themes:

Private finance

Private actors were out in force in New York, and mobilizing climate finance was high on many event agendas. There was widespread recognition of the need to accelerate private investment in urban climate projects, with emphasis on the need for effective and targeted public finance that reduces the risk for private investment.

The FAST-Infra Label was also presented as a key mechanism for mobilizing private investment in sustainable infrastructure projects through certification, and sessions on green bonds and blended finance raised the potential of innovative finance to accelerate private investment in cities’ climate projects.

Adaptation

Urban adaptation was also a priority topic at NYCW, with conversations centered around the need to accelerate investment in adaptation projects. As noted by Jorge Gastelumendi, Senior Director of the Climate Resilience Center, “There is not enough investment in adaptation because we haven’t yet figured out how to internalize climate risks in our decision-making.”

The importance of data, including on the climate risks faced by cities and the potential costs and damages avoided by implementing resilience projects, was further discussed at a training session on the Resilient Cities Catalyst’s Climate Resilience Assessment and the first NYCW edition of The Resilience Hub, highlighting the growing need to build capacity and strong enabling environments to enable climate finance for urban adaptation.

Elevating city voices in national-level climate action

Multilevel governance was a key topic on the cities agenda, with the High-Level Political Dialogue on the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (CHAMP) further raising the importance of city voices to achieving Nationally Determined Contributions and adding the United Kingdom and Finland to its list of endorsing countries.

In addition, The Subnational Climate Action Leaders’ Exchange (SCALE) Climate Action Week Dialogue brought cities together with a broad range of stakeholders to discuss solutions to accelerate climate action. City voices were also spotlighted during the WRI Ross Center’s Prize for Cities and at events held by CDP on the power of the US’s Inflation Reduction Act to finance city climate action.

Overall, NYCW 2024 represented a key milestone for the role of cities and subnational actors in the climate discussion and demonstrated the growing strength of civil society actors in driving the climate agenda. The prominence of conversations on climate finance, particularly for issues concerning cities such as adaptation, private sector investment, and multilevel coordination, further solidified the role of cities as the drivers of climate action but also cemented the critical need to accelerate urban climate finance flows to ensure a safe and liveable planet.

We look forward to building on the conversations held at NYCW as we head into World Urban Forum 12, U20, and COP29, and we invite you to join us at our upcoming events during these key fora.

Footnotes:

¹ We present climate finance flows as averages of two years’ data to smooth out single-year fluctuations.