Currently underway, the 2022 Daring Cities forum is seeing experts, researchers, practitioners and urban leaders address climate financing for cities and urban environments.
📢 #DaringCities registration is open!
Building upon last year’s success, this virtual conference will focus on tackling climate finance's complex challenges.Join the climate finance conversation from 3-7 October by registering today at https://t.co/XwfYjjWPEd pic.twitter.com/cN5N8rvoA9
— ICLEI (@ICLEI) September 21, 2022
Daring Cities is ICLEI’s virtual global forum, the first that is free for all to access. Every year since 2020, the forum has been helping “spread knowledge, build capacity and elevate the voices of stakeholders to accelerate funding the climate emergency.”
The event centers around concepts such as “Know More,” “Act More” and “Lead Together.”
Daring Cities 2022: Addressing climate emergency finance
The Paris Agreement calls for “making flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” However, ICLEI research shows that cities continue to brush off climate efforts due to insufficient access to funds.
“Climate action funding is available, but not accessible due to the lack of local technical and financial capacities to design investment-ready projects,” said Mar-Len Abigail S. Binay, Mayor of Makati, Philippines, ICLEI Global Executive Committee, Innovative Financing Portfolio Chair.
Climate science suggests urgent action needs to be taken before 2030, yet with cities slacking on climate protections and innovations, this target continues to be less and less realistic. ICLEI is hoping to change that.
Related articles: Why It’s Time for Climate Emergency Finance | Show Me (How to Get) the Money: Cities and Climate Finance
To be considered a “daring city,” ICLEI explains that the city must “take urgent action that reflects our state of climate emergency, are ambitious in the face of doubt, learn from the past and other cities and are accountable to their residents and track their progress.”
The 2022 Daring Cities forum seeks to make every city a “daring city.”
This year the forum began on October 3 and will end on October 7. Its primary focus is on ways for cities and urban governments to raise climate emergency finance and overcome the challenges that this presents.
Over one thousand city leaders, practitioners, researchers and experts are taking part in the virtual workshops and high-level dialogues on the challenges of climate funding.
More specifically, Daring Cities 2022 is zeroing in on the following key aspects:
- Governance and climate finance
- Public-private partnerships
- Innovative finance
- Resilience finance
- Climate justice finance
During #DaringCities 2022, you can join interactive workshops and high level plenaries focused on:
👥 Governance and Public Finance
🏛️ Public Private Partnerships
💡Innovative Finance
🌍 Resilience Finance
💸 Climate Justice FinanceRegister at https://t.co/GXTku5HPkc pic.twitter.com/ArgZpbC8vH
— Daring Cities (@daringcities) September 12, 2022
The talks at this year’s forum will look at three main concepts:
“Know more”: Talks around the “engagement of local and regional governments in the global stocktake of the Paris Agreement.”
“Act Better”: How to get community and public engagement in the climate emergency in relation to the UNFCCC Action for Climate Empowerment agenda.
“Lead Together”: Innovative climate financing strategies and partnerships. This section will include virtual and in-person High-Level Dialogues and will develop strategies for COP27, the next United Nations Climate Conference to take place on November 18, 2022, in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.
Setbacks in climate efforts
ICLEI has found, using its extensive data, that climate funding efforts have been stalled, largely as a result of the pandemic, despite climate change worsening.
“Our world is on life support,” writes ICLEI in a statement on its Daring Cities 2022 report. “2022 has been filled with ‘unprecedented,’ ‘once in a lifetime,’ ‘first-ever’ climate disasters like droughts, floods and wildfires and temperatures in every corner of the world. Yet a comprehensive, global response to the climate emergency has been largely stalled due to COVID-19 recovery, war and threats of recession.”
However, despite the challenges, the ICLEI goes on to point out that there are other cities that have found creative ways to direct climate efforts, such as the Federal City of Bonn, Germany, which co-hosts Daring Cities alongside ICLEI.
Recently, Bonn completed their second Voluntary Local Review (VRL) that reports on their progress on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). The city is also drafting the Bonn Climate Plan 2035 as a systematic way to accomplish climate neutrality.
At Daring Cities 2022, the Federal City of Bonn will have two events in partnership with other organizations and networks. They will include workshops on Gender-Conscious Climate Action and Resilience and Disaster Prevention.
As talks continue this week, hopefully concrete plans from city officials and climate scientists will be developed in order to assist a very prevalent climate financial crisis.
To register for Daring Cities 2022 click here.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Featured Photo: San Francisco, United States. Featured Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
