This report, Cities and Climate Change: An Urgent Agenda, focuses on three broad issues pertaining to cities and climate change. How cities contribute to and are affected by climate change. How policy makers can use cities to change human behaviour and improve technology related to climate change. How cities should use climate change as an opportunity to raise their profile, reinforce sensible policies, and move toward a more sustainable community and planet.
Cities are often seen as contributing to environmental degradation and represent immense ecological burdens. However, cities can also be models of environmental efficiency, because increased density and better management reduce the cost of service delivery, promote innovation, and enable prosperity through economic development. Sustainable cities are the best option to provide a quality of life while reducing net pollution such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the political level, cities are credible laboratories of social change with sufficient scale to bring about meaningful actions. At the economic level, the world’s 50 largest cities alone have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $9.6 trillion, more than all of China, and second only to the entire U.S. economy. Cities offer dynamism, scale, stronger linkages, and a greater sense of urgency among residents and their local leaders.
