Summary: World Cities Report 2024 underscores the necessity for climate action to be participatory and community-led, urging the development of locally appropriate solutions that address the unique needs of residents, particularly in informal settlements and low-income neighborhoods that have often been side-lined in decision-making processes
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) has unveiled its latest World Cities Report titled: Cities and Climate Action, focusing on the pressing challenges posed by climate change and rapid urbanization. The Report has been released to coincide with the twelfth session of the World Urban Forum that is taking place in Cairo, Egypt, 4 - 8 November 2024. The report warns that over 2 billion city dwellers could face an additional temperature increase of at least 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2040.
The World Cities Report 2024 provides a greater understanding of the role that urban areas can play addressing the existential threat posed by climate change. The Report explores how urban areas can be positioned to take effective action towards achieving the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5°C and adapting to the impacts of climate change by building resilience across a wide range of dimensions.
In a Foreword to the Report, the UN Secretary General notes that: ‘When buildings, homes and vital infrastructure like water and transportation systems are poorly planned, built and managed, they are no match for climate-fueled disasters like rising seas, heat waves, and other extreme weather impacts. This challenge disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable people’
‘What is clear is that climate change is already upon us. For those city dwellers caught on the frontline of the various catastrophes playing out in cities—houses destroyed by cyclones, roads melted by extreme heat, entire settlements inundated in flood water—denial or delay is not an option. We already have the solutions to act, should we so wish’, Anacláudia Rossbach Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director UH Habitat provides hope in the Report’s Introduction.
Four key issues underpin the framing of the Report: the urgency of action given the devastating impacts of climate change as witnessed in different parts of the world; the reinvigorated role of urban areas in addressing the climate crisis given their unique characteristics; the implementation of effective and inclusive climate action that cities and communities can take to address the scourge of climate change; and the people-centred nature of climate action.
The Report emphasizes implementation of effective climate action that cities and human settlements in diverse contexts can realistically take to address climate change. In other words, how can cities drive climate action? The Report identifies persistent bottlenecks to implementation and critically interrogates why the needle on climate action in cities is not moving as it should, given the devastating impacts of climate change.
The
World Cities Report 2024 advances a people-centred approach to climate
action, ably supported by nature-based solutions. This approach promotes
effective and inclusive climate action as a framework for building climate
resilience in urban areas. People, especially vulnerable groups, must be at the
centre of any meaningful climate action. The
World Cities Report 2024 offers clear policy directions to build resilience
to climate change across multiple dimensions in urban areas. To prevent climate
action from entrenching existing inequalities and vulnerabilities among urban
population, the World Cities Report 2024 advocates for a just climate
transition.