Secure and equal access to land for all: Lessons on land governance and climate resilience from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Secure land and property rights are essential for improving the livelihoods of the poor and ending poverty. Effective and equitable land governance can also contribute to economic development, domestic resource mobilisation and climate change resilience. Promoting fair and transparent land tenure systems should therefore be a priority for national governments

Low Carbon Cities: Is Ambitious Action Affordable?

Research has begun to uncover the extent that greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to cities, as well as the scope for cities to contribute to emissions reduction. But assessments of the economics of urban climate mitigation are lacking, and are currently based on selective case studies or specific sectors. Further analysis is crucial to enable action at the urban level. Here we consider the investment needs associated with 11 clusters of low carbon measures that could be deployed across the world’s urban areas in a way that is consistent with a broader 2°C target. Economic assessment of these low carbon measures finds that they could be deployed around the world with investments of c$1 trillion per year between 2015 and 2050 (equivalent to 1.3$16.6 trillion USD in the period to 2050. However, discount rates, energy prices and rates of technological learning are key to the economic feasibility of climate action, with the NPV of these measures ranging from -$1.1 trillion USD to$65.2 trillion USD under different conditions

Building Climate Resilience and Water Security in Cities: Lessons from the sponge city of Wuhan, China

The vulnerability of Chinese cities to water-related disasters is being exacerbated by climate change. To counter the effects of flooding, water scarcity and water pollution, the government has been trialling innovative green solutions. This policy brief looks at how the “Sponge City” approach has been implemented in Wuhan

Towards Sustainable Mobility and Improved Public Health: Lessons from bike sharing in Shanghai, China

Reliable, affordable and safe transport is key to making cities sustainable. At present, however, many cities are beset by congestion, inadequate connectivity, wasted public space and poor air quality. This policy brief presents lessons from Shanghai, where the world’s largest bicycle-sharing scheme has been implemented to address the challenges presented by inadequate current transport networks and climate change

Producer Cities and Consumer Cities: Using Production- and Consumption-Based Carbon Accounts to Guide Climate Action in China, the UK, and the US

Meeting the commitments made in the Paris Agreement on climate change will require different approaches in different countries. However, a common feature in many contexts relates to the continued and sometimes increasing significance of the carbon footprints of urban centres. These footprints consider both production or territorial (i.e. Scope 1 and 2) emissions, and consumption or extra-territorial (i.e. Scope 3) emissions. Although a growing number of cities have adopted targets for their production-based emissions, very few have even started to analyse or address their consumption-based emissions. This presents a potential challenge for urban policymaking if consumption emissions rise while production emissions fall, and for climate mitigation more broadly if emissions are effectively migrating to areas without carbon reduction targets or capabilities. To explore these issues, in this paper we analyse and compare production- and consumption-based emissions accounts for urban centres in China, the UK and the US. Results show that per-capita income and population density are strong predictors of consumption-based emissions levels, and consumption-based emissions appear to diminish but not decouple with higher per-capita incomes. In addition, results show that per-capita income is a predictor of net emissions - or the difference between production- and consumption-based accounts - suggesting that continuing increases in per capita income levels may drive the ‘leakage’ of urban emissions. These findings highlight a risk in placing too much faith in city-level climate strategies focused only on production-based emissions, and stress the importance of new city-level initiatives that focus on consumption-based emissions, especially in cities that are shifting from producer to consumer city status

Supportive governance for city-scale low carbon building retrofits: a case study from Shanghai

There is significant potential for reducing energy use and emissions from buildings through energy efficiency retrofits. However, a number of barriers, including long payback periods and uncertainties around business models and technologies, restrict large scale implementation. A recent joint project, piloting green energy schemes and low-carbon investments in public and commercial buildings in the Changning district of Shanghai, China, indicated opportunities to break through these barriers. This study conducted a cost benefit analysis to investigate how an innovative combination of financial and non-financial supported retrofits, and could serve as a model for other urban areas. In total, 44 retrofit sub-projects were carried out and achieved energy savings of 30,217 tons of coal equivalent. The average payback period was 2.43 years, and with subsidies was further reduced to 1.79 years. The Changning Low Carbon Office played a critical role in coordinating and supporting the uptake of retrofit measures but non-economic factors continue to restrict investment by financial institutions and the implementation of retrofits on a larger scale

Affordable and clean energy for all: Lessons on rooftop solar from Delhi, India

This paper analyses lessons from India, where electricity consumption is set to triple by 2040. It finds that clear national leadership supporting municipal authorities to incorporate innovative business models that help lowincome households to access renewable energy is critical. If new approaches used in New Delhi were adopted nationwide, they would deliver 8 gigawatts of additional solar capacity by 2022, reduce energy bills for 2.6 million households, create 100,000–150,000 jobs and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10 megatonnes a year—the equivalent of closing four coal-fired power stations

Beyond Domain-Led Conceptualisations of Urban Zero-Carbon Transitions

Rapid, systemic change is needed to achieve zero emissions, but there is uncertainty about how or where to intervene in urban systems. Drawing on the work of Donella Meadows, we apply a Leverage Points Perspective to identify and characterize points of system-level intervention that emerge from a study of climate action in Calgary, Canada, which was unique in applying a mixed set of academic approaches. Reflecting on Meadows’ and other frameworks for conceptualizing complex systems change, we discuss the challenge of conceptualizing change, a task of unique urgency in the context of the climate emergency. Too frequently, we argue, approaches focus attention on specific modes or forms of action seen to have the greatest opportunity for affecting change in place of the complex chains of actors, objects, and processes that collectively are the key to a deep and sustaining transition. We conclude by exploring how the insights of the Leverage Points Perspective and other approaches can be brought together to inform practical action, and by examining how related theoretical work on provisioning systems and applied work on urban Climate Commissions may be drawn on to advance understanding of how to deliver urban systems change

Reduced waste and improved livelihoods for all: Lessons on waste management from Ahmedabad, India

Conventional approaches to solid waste management have often proven unaffordable and ineffective. This paper analyses the lessons from Ahmedabad, India. It finds that clear national leadership that supports municipal authorities to integrate unionised informal waste pickers into formal municipal waste management can deliver competitive recycling rates at lower costs, whilst also improving the income, health, job security and inclusion of marginalised groups, reducing urban poverty and enhancing climate resilience

The economic case for low carbon cities

In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis of the results of five recently completed studies that examined the economic case for investment in low-carbon development in five cities: Leeds in the UK, Kolkata in India, Lima in Peru, Johor Bahru in Malaysia and Palembang in Indonesia. The results demonstrate that there is a compelling economic case for cities in both developed and developing country contexts to invest, at scale, in cost-effective forms of low-carbon development. The studies show that these cost-effective investments, for example in building energy efficiency, small-scale renewables and more efficient vehicles and transport systems, could lead to significant reductions (in the range of 14-24% relative to business-as-usual trends) in urban energy use and carbon emissions over the next 10 years. The financial savings generated by these investments would be equivalent to between 1.7% and 9.5% of annual city-scale GDP. Securing these savings would require an average investment of $3.2 billion per city, but with an average payback period of approximately two years at commercial interest rates. The results therefore show that large-scale low-carbon investments can appeal to local decision-makers and investors on direct, short-term economic grounds. They also indicate that climate mitigation ought to feature prominently in economic development strategies as well as in the environment and sustainability strategies that are often more peripheral to, and less influential in, city-scale decision making. If these findings were replicated and similar investments were made in cities globally, then we estimate that they could generate reductions equivalent to 10-18% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2025. While the studies therefore offer some grounds for optimism, they also highlight the institutional capacities that need to be built and the policy interventions and financing mechanisms that need to be adopted before these opportunities can be exploited. If these were all in place, initiatives to exploit the cost-effective opportunities for low-carbon development in cities could build momentum for change in cities that for a time could be globally significant. However, the studies also demonstrate that, in rapidly growing cities, the carbon savings from cost-effective investments could be quickly overwhelmed – in as little as seven years – by the impacts of sustained population and economic growth. They therefore highlight the pressing need for wider decarbonization (particularly of electricity supply) and deeper decarbonization (through more structural changes in urban form and function) if truly low-carbon cities are to emerge