The Low Carbon City Forum - the first global citizen-led forum on low-carbon cities inspired by the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development - seeks to answer questions on the role that cities can play in the fight against climate change by convening 3,000 citizens, politicians, academics, urban leaders and changemakers from around the world. Designed within the Framework of the Low Carbon City Program, the Low Carbon City Forum is a long term initiative led by La Ciudad Verde that will be organised for the first time in Medellin, Colombia, on 10-12th October.
With global debates on climate change continuing to focus on the new urban agenda, La Ciudad Verde seeks to scale up low-carbon solutions in Latin American cities through low-cost interventions, citizen participation and stakeholder involvement.
"Cities are and will be crucial change-makers when it comes to tackling climate change," says Victor Giraldo, Head of Implementation, South Pole Group Colombia. "Moving forward, the key question for me is how to best measure urban change, what are the most efficient and appropriate tools to evaluate the impact of implemented low-carbon strategies? This is the topic that we want to see highlighted when discussing urban adaptation and mitigation."
Alongside implementing and measuring urban transformation comes financing low-carbon strategies and activities. The Low Carbon City Forum will host a side event of the Low Carbon City Lab, focusing on innovative finance for cities.
"Cities hold the key to unlocking enormous climate action potential, emitting 70% of energy-related carbon emissions," says Martin Stadelmann, Practice Leader, Green Finance & Cities, South Pole Group. "However, only 30% of international public climate finance flows through cities, and borrowing costs for cities in developing countries are high. So investments need to be redirected and financing costs to be lowered. Now is the time to develop and present both viable projects and financial tools like green bonds that can get projects underway by offering investors an adequate risk-return ratio."
Through a holistic approach, the Low Carbon City Forum hopes to encourage collaboration between actors in both the public and the private sector and has thus far, engaged a total of 60 ambassador cities. The Forum in Medellin will be closely followed by Habitat III, the third major United Nations conference on sustainable urban development, held in Quito, Ecuador on October 17-20, which expects to see commitments around a new global strategy of urbanization for the coming decades.
South Pole Group supports the active engagement of cities towards a low-carbon future. Get in touch with Martin (m.stadelmann@thesouthpolegroup.com) and Victor (v.giraldo@thesouthpolegroup.com) or meet our experts at the Low Carbon Cities Forum in Medellin:
To find out more about the Low Carbon City Lab (LoCaL), visit www.local.climate-kic.org or get in touch with Victor Gancel, Program Manager, victor.gancel@climate-kic.org
