The Importance of City Governance in Climate Action

Cities account for an estimated 72 percent of the world’s energy use and 70 percent of emissions (IPCC 2022, 2023). While the world's countries are not cutting emissions fast enough, cities are a critical part of the solution. Many cities are already leading the way in climate mitigation with bold ambitions to cut emissions and are initiating efforts to address climate impacts. In recent years, the role of cities has been highlighted in the UNFCCC process and the IPCC has launched the work on a special report on cities, to be published in March 2027.

Climate mitigation and adaptation are sector wide issues. As cities work to cut their emissions and become climate resilient, how climate mitigation and adaptation measures are integrated in local governance systems and budgeting may be an important factor for success.

One example of a new and innovative governance system is climate budgeting. Climate budgeting has gained worldwide interest in the past years as several cities such as New York, Montreal, Mumbai, Oslo, Copenhagen, and London have applied practices that integrate climate goals into budgets and finance. In 2024, C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world's leading cities in confronting climate change, made climate budgeting a requirement for its members to develop for their cities by 2030. The definition of a climate budget is a governance system that mainstreams climate commitments and considerations into decision-making on policies, actions and budget (C40).

This issue of Frontiers in Sustainable Cities aims to explore the opportunities and challenges in governing, monitoring, measuring and scaling up the implementation of climate strategies at the local level. It also seeks answers to what opportunities and limits climate mitigation and adaptation policies in cities have for social justice and increased citizen well being.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

- Innovation in governance and climate budgeting for mitigation or adaptation in cities.
- The role of political leadership in implementing climate mitigation or adaptation in cities.
-Lessons learned in implementing a whole of government approach to climate action.
- The growing availability or persistent gaps in models and data to support city assessments of exposure and vulnerability to climate-exacerbated hazards.
- Conflicting goals, trade-offs, and synergies between social justice, increased living standards, and city climate adaptation and mitigation.
- Nature-based solutions and their potential and limits for climate action, social justice, and increased well being in cities.
- Scalability of climate action across governance levels and between cities in the global north and south.
- Lessons learned in measuring and implementing climate mitigation and adaptation and in providing climate and information services to enable action.

Topic Editor Jan Whittington is the founder and CEO of Climate Solutions International, Inc. The other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject.

Keywords: Climate Governance. Climate Action. Sustainable Energy Use. Climate Budget. Climate Strategy.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.