C40 Financing Sustainable Cities Forum

Dolly Oladini, Senior Policy Officer (Air Quality), gives an overview of the C40 Financing Sustainable Cities Forum

On the day...

Last Tuesday, the C40 Financing Sustainable Cities Forum was hosted in London by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and Mayor of London’s Office, with the support of the Citi Foundation and WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.

C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. With 90 cities now on C40’s map, the organisation acts both locally and collaboratively. The C40 cities have meaningful global impact in reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks.

The event brought together over 200 delegates from cities, investors, national governments, academics, private sector experts, NGOs and technology providers to identify the key barriers in financing sustainable urban infrastructure. These partners discussed and developed their shared solutions for securing finance for low-carbon investments in cities.

Shirley Rodrigues, Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, provided an introduction into the investment opportunities available to meet the responsibilities of the Paris Agreement and deliver sustainable and inclusive growth in cities around the world.

22 eminent speakers were invited to speak, including:

• Sir Roger Gifford – Chair of the City of London’s Green Finance Initiative; 685th Lord Mayor of London; UK Head of SEB
• Nick Hurd MP – UK Climate Change and Industry Minister
• Eduardo Paes – Former Mayor of Rio de Janeiro; Former C40 Chair; Commissioner, New Climate Economy
• Naoko Ishii – CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility
• Sue Tindal – Chief Financial Officer at Auckland Council
• Val Smith – Director, Corporate Sustainability at Citi

What's happening now...

C40 and CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) have partnered together to produce an analysis of sustainable infrastructure projects currently in development across the C40 network.

To follow the event, 20 delegates from 11 cities have been discussing ideas and learning from each other at the Clean Bus Finance Academy. Taking place over three days, each participating city has been identifying new business model options to help address city financial challenges in transitioning to clean bus fleets. These options are to be identified through city-to-city good practice sharing, collaboration between city transport and finance officials, and insights from external experts.

Participating cities:

• Auckland
• Buenos Aires
• Cape Town
• Durban
• London
• Los Angeles
• Mexico City
• Oslo
• Paris
• Santiago
• Seattle

Coming up...

There is great opportunity for collaboration between cities and the private sector to invest in sustainable infrastructure projects in order to deliver a climate safe future.

With further support, C40 aims to work with CDP and various other partners to improve the flow of project data from cities and build out this pipeline to become a valuable resource for cities and investors to support sustainable infrastructure investment.