Cities and regions are crucial partners to national governments for delivering climate neutrality and an accelerated, just energy transition. Given cities’ roles as cradles of economic development, territorial innovation, socio-economic transformation and centres for education and re-skilling, national governments—as well as international platforms such as G7, G20 and supranational bodies such as the EU—increasingly seek to collaborate and work with subnational governments to tailor their policies.

Against this backdrop, local government leaders came together today with national and international climate diplomacy representatives at COP28 to recommend how multilevel and responsive governance should be the “new normal” for the Paris Agreement. In a session titled, “Building bridges within G7: lessons from the Urban7 cooperation for ambitious climate action in Japan, Europe and the USA”, the Mayor of ICLEI Member Turku (Finland), Minna Arve, ICLEI Member Malmö’s (Sweden) Climate Lead Transition, Jonas Kamleh, and Mayor of ICLEI Member Columbia (Missouri, USA) Barbara Buffaloe highlighted that cities are taking action to reach climate neutrality, to adapt to climate change, and protect and restore biodiversity.

As those closest to their citizens, these local government representatives highlighted the need to take action by bringing citizens on board. They also highlighted the need to advance collaboration between different levels of governments to make sure that citizens' worries and demands for action are heard. The opportunities raised by the Urban7 initiative to advocated to increase the collaboration and communication between different governance levels at national level but also between G7 countries and their local governments.

Kazuhiko Takemoto, Chair of ICLEI Japan, spoke to the efforts made by the Japanese presidency of G7 to organise the Ministerial Roundtable in October 2023, which served as a key moment to enhance mutual learning and policy improvement in the G7 countries. Results from that meeting were recently announced with the launch of the summary report on G7 Roundtable Meeting on Subnational Climate Actions at the Japan Pavilion at COP28.

The report identified four key findings from the Roundtable:

1. Subnational climate actions reinforce the virtuous cycle by addressing multiple urban challenges and creating synergies, including pollution control, biodiversity, circular economy, and economic growth.
2. One of the biggest challenges is channeling climate finance to cities. Leveraging private funding with public funding sources using mechanisms such as blended finance, joint public-private financing initiatives, transition funds, and guarantee mechanisms are examples of possible solutions. A number of programs have been established by G7 members in support of such Initiatives.
3. Knowledge sharing through either domestic or international city networking is vital. Collaboration and scaling up of ambitious activities beyond regions should also be encouraged.
4. Other elements to enhance ambitions and strengthen implementation at subnational levels include inclusive approaches, technical support, guidance at the national level, local leadership, partnerships, engagement of actors at different levels (i.e., multilevel climate action), and digital transformation.

Looking ahead, H.E. Francesco Corvaro, Special Envoy for Climate Change in Italy, highlighted the incoming Italian G7 Presidency's interest in continuing this conversation on the importance of multilevel governance next year, clearly emphasising that cities play a key role in climate action– as they are both on the frontline and on the forefront of it.

For more information, watch the recorded session in full here. Stay tuned for more updates from COP28 as we will continue to demonstrate once again that #MultilevelActionDelivers.