Cities and states have aimed higher and moved faster on climate action than national governments.
The reason is simple: To local leaders, climate problems and solutions matter because their constituencies are directly impacted by them. Extreme heat, flooding and air pollution make people’s lives worse. Cleaner air, convenient public transportation, and access to parks and nature make them better.
Cities are also at the root of climate change. They already house the majority of the world’s population and generate 75% of all greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, there will be another 2.5 billion urban dwellers globally.
Many cities are leading the way on what effective climate action can look like, with clean air zones in London; electric buses in places like Santiago, Chile and Bogotá, Colombia; and over a million trees planted in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Yet despite this, local leaders have long been absent from the world’s major climate talks.
Since it was first held three decades ago, the annual UN climate summit (known as the “Conference of Parties,” or “COP”) has been a negotiation between nation states. Cities, states and regions have some voice in the process through the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities Constituency, but no real influence. Local leaders have been agitating for a larger role for years.
At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, they may have finally made a breakthrough, with a clear path forward to driving more locally responsive climate action.
Putting Cities on the Climate Agenda
The biggest sign of progress is that local governments are featuring prominently in countries’ climate plans for the first time.
COP30 was a major reckoning moment for new national climate commitments — known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) — due for all countries in 2025. Many were submitted at or in the lead-up to the summit.
The so-called “NDCs 3.0” were meant to be more ambitious than the last, getting the world closer to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree C target.
While the plans largely fall short of this goal, local climate action was still a bright spot: For the first time, a strong majority of submitted NDCs — 80%, according to the UN’s climate change body, the UNFCCC — mention cities and other local actors as key levers for the green transition. This is a significant change from the last round, up 19%.
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This shift is in part the result of one groundbreaking initiative: CHAMP. The Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships, launched two years ago at COP28 in Dubai, advocates for better collaboration between national governments and cities, states and regions to drive climate action at scale. (CHAMP is led by the Support Unit of C40 Cities and the Global Covenant of Mayors, and WRI has been a partner since launch.)
CHAMP has since been endorsed by 77 countries and the European Union — all recognizing that working with local governments is crucial to delivering national climate goals. That is real momentum, never seen before.
COP30 kept the ball rolling. The Local Leaders Forum, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, was held just before the summit and brought together hundreds of national and local leaders. It produced a pledge from more than 14,000 cities, towns, states, regions and provinces to redouble efforts on local climate action and collaboration with national partners, and a $168-million commitment from Bloomberg Philanthropies to support local-national collaboration.
It also produced a clear call for these actors to have a greater role in the formal COP process moving forward.
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, called cooperation between every level of government “mission critical,” emphasizing that cities, states and regions are where climate action “can be won or lost.” He urged all countries to leverage the CHAMP framework as they prepare and implement their climate plans.
Brazil and Germany have announced they will co-chair CHAMP, creating the first nationally led steering committee. They plan to lead a diverse group of countries that will help move the initiative forward in the years to come.
Now, momentum must shift from collaborative climate planning to real action and impact.
What Else Was Gained from COP30
With these gains, the movement for stronger urban voices in national climate planning, as well as national resources to support local ambition, has become significantly stronger, more organized and more practical.
In addition to progress on CHAMP, COP30 saw several other big initiatives and milestones for local climate action:
Tackling extreme heat and health risks
Extreme heat causes more than half a million deaths annually, and cities are warming at twice the global average rate. Urban nature-based solutions, like trees, parks, urban forests and strategic wetlands, are key opportunities to create shade, cool neighborhoods and create healthier environments overall.
At COP30, 185 cities stepped up to combat extreme heat through the Beat the Heat initiative. Underpinned by a powerful group of supporting organizations and led by the COP30 Presidency and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Cool Coalition, these cities are acting on one of the most severe climate impacts today. WRI is one of these partners and will focus on providing data analysis of local heat risks and potential solutions.
In addition, a group of 35 leading philanthropies — including Wellcome Trust, Quadrature, Rockefeller Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies — made a groundbreaking commitment of $300 million to accelerate solutions on climate and health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This is a major opportunity to drive research and solutions on extreme heat, air pollution and climate-sensitive infectious diseases in cities.
Addressing the housing crisis
More than 1.2 billion people globally still lack access to safe, affordable housing. How this need is met will have significant impacts on people and the planet. Building in proximity to services and transport can create tremendous dividends for people and nature, increasing access to jobs and services and reducing emissions. More compact neighborhoods alone can reduce urban emissions by a quarter, according to the IPCC.
Those living in informal settlements are also exceedingly vulnerable to heat, floods and other climate threats. As new WRI research supports and Wanjira Mathai, Managing Director for WRI Africa, writes, “the informal housing crisis demands a climate response.”
This year was the first time the global housing crisis made it onto the COP agenda. As part of the Fourth Urban Ministerial, an official part of the COP program, UN-Habitat convened countries, cities and organizations in one of four official round tables to discuss housing. This marks a critical first step toward addressing housing and climate issues together on a global scale.
Improving transport
Transport is the second highest-emitting sector globally and one of the most consequential for urban areas. Transport infrastructure is among the largest investments cities make, especially those facing rapid growth. And poor transit access in many cities keeps opportunities and services out of reach for many residents.
Spearheaded by the Government of Chile, ministers from 11 countries unveiled a landmark global declaration on transport for people, development and the planet at COP30. The declaration sets out a collective effort to align the global transport sector with the 1.5 degree C goal. It calls for efforts to reduce overall energy demand from all transport by 25% by 2035, and to shift one-third of transport energy to “sustainable” biofuels and renewable energy. More countries agreeing to this target could establish, for the first time, a clear global goal for transport sector emissions. It would also create a benchmark against which to measure countries’ progress. This is a great step toward incorporating better sectoral goals into NDCs, which WRI continues to advocate for.
Local governments will be crucial partners in achieving global transport goals. For example, multilevel partnerships can help connect national and international climate finance and accelerate investments in sustainable urban transport, such as public transit, active mobility, and electrification of fleets and freight.
An Amazonian Torchbearer
Amid lagging national ambition, many left COP30 disappointed that negotiators could not agree on more concrete plans to shift away from fossil fuels and get the world on a safer trajectory.
Yet at a time when the UNFCCC process is under fire, the growing influence of cities, states and regions offers new avenues for progress. Further opening up COP negotiations to local governments can help inspire innovative approaches and connect climate action to people’s lives more directly.
We saw this potential on display in the city of Belém.
Overcoming early skepticism that it could pull off such a large event in a remote and (relatively) small city, Belém — working alongside the state of Pará and federal partners — proved it could be done. The setting also matters: The Brazilian Amazon, the world’s most important forest, is also home to 29 cities, 24 million urban residents and 868,000 Indigenous people. How to provide for people without destroying this critical habitat is a microcosm of our global challenge, with even higher stakes on land use and other urban development questions.
Belém faced considerable bumps in the road, from protests to a housing shortage and even a small fire. But the city also invested (with considerable federal assistance) in improving buildings, public spaces, public transport, bike lanes and urban nature. It showcased the enormous power and charm of cities to help us navigate today’s challenges and adapt to future needs.
In a COP focused on implementation, Belém was a fitting torchbearer for the potential of thousands of other cities, states and regions to effectively collaborate with national partners and lead the way on climate action that delivers for people, nature and the climate.
There’s still a ways to go before subnational governments are truly integrated into the formal COP process. But we now have more pieces in place than ever before to seize this great opportunity.
