Mobilizing commitments for the SG's Climate Action Summit 2019

The Secretary-General of the United Nations will host the Climate Action Summit in New York in September 2019 with the objective of boosting ambition and rapidly accelerate action to implement the Paris Agreement. The Secretary-General aims to demonstrate a leap in collective ambition with new commitments that have transformational impact, have sustainable development co-benefits, replicable and scalable, measurable and implementable, and innovative and visible.

Nine interdependent tracks have been identified [link], including a track on Infrastructure, Cities and Local Action (ICLA), co-led by Kenya and Turkey with support of UN-Habitat. The IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5°C stresses that to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 and meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, we need to design, build and manage our infrastructure and cities differently to prioritize low-emission and resilient urban development. Major outcome areas of the track are transport, buildings and climate resilience of the urban poor, underpinned by decentralized finance and sub-national mobilization as the key enablers to realise these outcomes.

Objectives

A special ministerial-level event is proposed during the UN-Habitat assembly to:

• brief Assembly participants on the progress of the ICLA track

• mobilize support for specific initiatives in the pipeline of the track

• submit a call for action, to the Assembly, by countries supporting the track (and potentially others) appealing to maximize the contribution of sustainable urbanization to climate mitigation and adaptation and

ensuring that national and subnational contributions reinforce each other.