Thank you COP31 Presidency and President of Negotiations. I am speaking on behalf of the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency.
Across the globe, subnational governments are already showing what’s possible in climate action. In countries that have endorsed CHAMP for climate action, which advances multilevel cooperation towards climate action, city climate commitments could close 37% of the gap between current NDCs and a Paris-aligned trajectory.
The forthcoming IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities is expected to provide an important scientific foundation for strengthening the role of urban and subnational territories in global climate action. By assessing and synthesizing the latest evidence on urban climate science, the report can help inform Parties’ consideration of how climate policies, plans, and implementation frameworks can better engage local and other subnational governments as essential partners.
This is how the Parties can operationalize key solutions with the help of subnational governments at COP31:
We ask Parties to use the Climate Finance Work Programme, Article 9.1 implementation, NCQG follow-up and the Veredas Dialogue to recognize multilevel climate finance as a core implementation architecture, enabling local and other subnational governments, as key actors and essential critical delivery partners of national governments, to co-lead climate action through accessible and high impact mechanisms and instruments.
Additionally, the commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2035 must now be matched by a credible subnational delivery pathway, so that finance reaches the cities, subnational regions and communities managing climate risks on the ground.
In the Just Transition Mechanism, we seek for representatives of subnational governments and other constituencies in the governance of the future Just Transition Mechanism, recognizing them as essential to the delivery of a whole-of-society approach to a just transition.
Furthermore, the Mechanism should acknowledge the critical role subnational governments play as just transition implementers and embed a whole-of-government approach to effectively translate high-level national commitments into tangible results for local communities and workers. The Mechanism should also include knowledge, capacity-building, technical assistance opportunities for subnational governments.
Finally, to bring these efforts together, we call for a formalized Multilevel Cooperative Dialogue – a systematic, joint space for national and subnational governments to address implementation barriers — including climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building — in response to the upcoming release of the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities and as part of the Second Global Stocktake.
