Climate change is becoming a major cause of an increasing rate of weather catastrophes. The heat-trapping greenhouse gas is making Earth’s temperature warms up rapidly from what was planned since the industrial revolution and leading to overlapping problems, especially for the lower to middle-income countries around the equator. Many efforts are strived by stakeholders to minimize negative externalities from climate change, one of them is discussed about loss and damage. For more than 30 years this issue has been raised by developing countries, but the developed countries as the largest emitters always avoid this topic. Last year, at the UN annual climate talks or known as Conference of Parties (COP) 27 at Sharm el-Sheikh, there was a breakthrough regarding the loss and damage. Several countries including Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Scotland, New Zealand, Austria, Ireland, Canada, the US, the UK, Spain, the EU, and France show their commitments to addressing loss and damage fund. When we have been waiting for compensation in an uncertain time and current national action plans are not on track for under a 1.5oC, prior responses from other levels to cope with climate change are done by cities.
Cities are home to 55 percent of the global population and are expected to grow by 2.5 billion people to 68 percent by 2050. As climate change deprivation many people’s livelihoods, these conditions drive millions of people to migrate to cities with the hope they would gain more opportunities to survive. As a result, many cities have experienced overpopulated and rapid urbanization under climate change without efforts to increase resilience is exposing cities to gain more climate risks. Recorded approximately 225.3 million internal displacements in the Asia and Pacific region happened during 2010 – 2021, especially in the five sub-regions (East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and West, and Pacific). Increasing mobility in the cities has led to the production of approximately three-quarters of energy-related CO2 of the total global emissions. Recorded that as much as 70 percent of cities worldwide are already dealing with the effect of climate change.
In efforts to tackle the climate crisis, the local government of the cities needs to reinforce the two-prolonged approach which is mitigation and adaptation. Undertaking a human rights-based approach (HRBA) as city-led climate agenda is a tool for realizing ecosystem-based agenda (EbA) which can be implemented through a local climate change action plan where human rights are a fundamental value. For example, Bilbao is a city council that adopted Charted Values, and Utrecht is a Global Goals City that cooperates with local businesses to raise awareness of their rights and monitors progress on the SDGs dashboard. In Asia, Gwangju has established a human rights department, hosted the annual World Human Rights Cities Forum as one of the most relevant events for bringing local government officials with organizations and other actors to establish and arrange systems to ensure human rights as a core, and implementing localization projects. Another example, in efforts to reduce emissions, Seoul has mandatory for their citizen that should be used all new vehicles to be electric from 2025. In addition, to support this program, the city is released electric vehicle charging infrastructure powered by solar panels which are accessible and provides subsidies for electric vehicles of up to 20 percent with additional support available for low-income households. This policy is expected to reduce emissions by approximately 43 percent compares with 2005 levels and create almost 15.000 jobs.
Moreover, hundreds of cities also show their commitment to accelerating net zero emissions by building networks. Recorded as many as 130 American cities are stepping up their ambition to reduce emissions by joining the Cities Race to Zero to help the US reach its goals of reducing emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050. Last year, the European Commission also announced 100 cities from the EU member states with 12 additional cities participating in EU Mission for climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 or known as the Cities Mission. Under this mission, the cities will receive millions of funding in the period 2022-2023 to address clean mobility, energy efficiency, and green urban planning, and offer the possibility to build joint initiatives and ramp up collaborations with other EU programs. The ranking compiled by CDP shows that only 43 out of 596 cities or similar to 7 percent received a top rank for their climate leadership and reduction of emissions, which twenty-one of them are in North America, nine in Europe, four in Australia, one in Latin America and Africa, and four in East Asia.
The proportion above, Asia and Africa have a minimum ‘A’ city in reducing emissions. The report mentioned five barriers that limit urban resilience that are multi-level governance, finance, a local capacity, access to technology and innovation, and equity. The Mayor of the City of Bonn, Mr. Ashok Sridharan said that “The adaptation fund has been instrumental in advancing adaptation to the most vulnerable over the past 10 years and ‘walks the walk’. Cities and regions stand ready to help as global adaptation needs continue to rise”. Nowadays, the ten members of ASEAN with a majority of developed countries have slow progress and struggling in energy transition because they have insecure funds. To achieve ASEAN’s target of 23 percent renewable energy supply by 2025 need an investment of US$ 27 billion per year. However, from 2016 – 2021, the ASEAN countries received no more than US$ 8 billion per year. At the global level, the World Bank estimated an amount of US$ 4.5 – 5.4 trillion per year which 9 – 27 percent part of it is aimed to make an urban infrastructure low-emission and resilient to climate risks. However, UNFCCC released there is a gap of US$ 1.8 – 2.4 trillion per year in financing for climate-resilient infrastructure globally with the majority of needed in urban areas.
Cities become a frontline in adaptation and mitigation because they prioritize sustainably local projects faster than a state. Therefore, with the financial barriers to access technology faced by the local governments, the discussion about climate funds should mobilize in the UN annual meeting about climate to enhance climate resilience as a priority within all of the cities, especially in the developing countries in Asia and Africa.
