GIZ is a German federal enterprise with 50 years of experience in a wide variety of areas, including economic development and employment promotion, climate, energy and the environment, urban development and decentralisation policies and sustainable infrastructure development as well as peace and security.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is our main commissioning party while other German ministries, such as the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), and other entities like the European Union (EU) are also important commissioners.

We work with businesses, civil society actors and research institutions, fostering successful interaction between development policy and other policy fields and areas of activity.  Our core competence – capacity development – has been one of the key services delivered by GIZ for over 30 years.

Our 23,614 employees, almost 70 per cent of whom are national staff, work in around 120 countries and we currently have 483 development workers in action in partner countries.

As a service provider in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development and education, our goal is shaping a future worth living. For us, creating livable and sustainable cities is at the centre of this ambition.

Our approach in working with cities is to strengthen urban institutions and actors so that they can manage urban challenges, access financing, strategically steer their development, and establish structures that guarantee citizens’ social security, economic livelihoods, ecological sustainability and political participation.

Through the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF), GIZ and our implementing partner C40 enable cities to access finance for climate change mitigation and resilience projects in urban areas by providing technical assistance to develop cities’ sustainability priorities into bankable investment proposals and connect these to suitable financing solutions. The CFF delivers project preparation and capacity development, widely shares knowledge and establishes partnerships between cities and financiers.

The project “Making infrastructure in Indonesia more modern and climate-friendly” strengthens capacities of relevant actors at sub-national and national level in Indonesia. The main aim is to prioritise infrastructure projects as part of the Indonesian-German Green Infrastructure Initiative based on specific criteria agreed with the German national development bank, KfW. In four selected provinces – West Java, Central Java, East Java and Bali – technical skills are trained so that local actors can select and adapt green infrastructure projects. This project combines technical assistance, provided by GIZ, with financial assistance, provided by KfW, which is important to leverage financing for sustainable urban development in the future.

The City Climate Finance GAP Fund supports cities with early-stage technical assistance for low carbon and climate resilient projects and urbanisation plans. It aims to close the urban climate financing gap at an early-stage and thus, complements the work of other project preparation facilities, such as the CFF, that support cities later in the project cycle. The GAP Fund is funded by the German and Luxembourg governments and co-implemented by GIZ, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank.

You can visit our website, search our project data base and follow us on social media for general information and updates on our work. We also provide a regular news email to our partner organisations that contains updates on our work on urban topics specifically. If you wish to be included in the mailing list, please contact Ilgin Warneke (ilgin.warneke@giz.de).

GIZ is already partners with a great number of Alliance members and is always open to new collaborations and partnerships to tackle local challenges and advance sustainable, inclusive and resilient urban development.

Our projects work closely and directly with cities and city-level actors, city networks and regional city associations as well as with sub-national, national, regional and international financing institutions and national governments. Through our engagement on these three levels, we receive the full picture of the demand and offer/supply for urban infrastructure and finance as well as the structural enablers and challenges for meeting cities’ demands.

GIZ is interested in working with Alliance members to improve project preparation in cities, mobilise investments for urban projects and improve governance issues that hamper enhancing urban climate finance.

To effectively tackle the financing gap for sustainable urban infrastructure, exchange and collaboration among different actors are crucial. Only through partnerships, we can identify synergies and uncover new ways forward. Therefore, we hope to form new partnerships and deepen existing ones as well as gain new insights around the topic of climate finance for cities.

GIZ projects like the CFF, the GAP Fund, FELICITY, GIZ-Covenant of Mayors Sub-Saharan Africa (CoMSSA) and MobiliseYourCity are already members of the Alliance and have engaged intensively in its work in all three action groups. They have for example steered the Project Preparation Action Group and contributed to the Project Preparation Readiness Training Mexico/Latin America, the NDB Policy Brief “Leveraging National Development Banks to Enhance Financing for Climate-Smart Urban Infrastructure | Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance“, the Project Preparation Glossary and Harmonized Project Preparation Application Template, the Project Preparation Practitioner’s Forum Mexico (led by ICLEI, FMDV) and the Report Integrating Benefits in Sustainable Infrastructure (led by CFF).

With this new institutional membership of GIZ in the Alliance, we hope to bring in diverse expertise and a broad array of experiences by involving further GIZ urban projects and sharing best practices, data and regional knowledge in the fields of urban climate finance, local governance and decentralisation as well as specific sectors like energy, WASH, construction, housing, transport/mobility and waste.

Through the GIZ external structure and presence in 120 countries, our long-standing experience in urban development and finance as well as our partnerships are well rooted locally. We, therefore, believe that GIZ can support the regionalisation of the Alliance’s work, provide direct links to the city- and national level as well as regional knowledge and connections.