Sasank Vemuri

Coordinator of MobiliseYourCity

Organization

MobiliseYourCity Partnership

Launched at COP21 in Paris in 2015, the MobiliseYourCity Partnership has established itself as the leading global Partnership of nearly 100 partners for sustainable urban mobility planning (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans and National Urban Mobility Policies or Investment Programs), policy development, and increasing investment for sustainable transport in developing and emerging economies.

Today, the Partnership has more than 70 member cities with a combined population of over 75 million people in 32 countries, and we have over 15 member countries.

As of February 2023, our partners (EU, BMZ, BMUV, AFD, MTE, FFEM) have raised over 50 million euros in grants to support 39 member cities and 9 member countries with technical assistance and project preparation.

We work together as partners to shape low-carbon mobility systems that contribute to economically vibrant, safe, and just cities for all urban residents of today and the future.

Our mission is to incubate scalable solutions, accelerate the adoption of proven approaches, and facilitate complex change processes to transform urban mobility.

We support our members through four service areas:

  • Mobility planning: We support our member cities and countries to shift from road-centric transport planning to mobility planning that focuses on meeting the needs of all people while balancing the needs of our planet.
  • Implementation support: We offer targeted implementation support to bridge the implementation gap for small-scale and critical measures that is due to low local capacities to allocate finance and, generally, too small amounts to attract external financiers. We focus on three areas: walking and cycling, paratransit, and policy and regulatory reforms.
  • Capacity building: To facilitate lasting change at a global level, we focus on developing, deploying and scaling tested solutions that lead to real results. The Partnership works as a knowledge hub to create, disseminate and scale knowledge.
  • Advocacy: We inspire our members to take bold, ambitious actions toward decarbonized and just mobility systems, and we animate others to support them to do so.

Two of our four main focus areas (SUMPs and NUMPs) support early-stage project identification and stakeholder buy-in for projects related to sustainable, low-carbon urban transport.

Another is the Emissions Calculator and MRV toolkit, which we hypothesize is important for cities to access climate finance because it offers a methodology to scientifically project real mitigation impacts of the measures included in their SUMPs and NUMPs.

Increasingly our donors are asking for the MobiliseYourCity implementation partners to do project preparation work for urban transport projects. We expect the Partnership to launch 4 pre-feasibility studies for low-carbon mass transit projects in the next year.

We read key reports such as the Global Landscape of Climate Finance from CPI, the joint report on MDB climate finance, and we exchange information with our colleagues and partners.

We have joined CCFLA in order to be connected to other actors in this space and to access resources that could benefit our member cities. As a Partnership, we are always looking to maximize resources and find synergies with partners on any given topic.

We expect to share our own resources on climate finance for cities. We are currently working on a finance toolkit for our member cities, with of course a specific focus on accessing finance for sustainable urban mobility.