'Global North has emitted carbon for centuries, must support South'

The climate crisis is real, but do cities, especially those in the developing world, have the wherewithal to gauge its impact, devise actionable strategies, and mobilise funds to finance them? For this, Urban-20 an engagement group of city leaders from G20 countries has recommended the need to build capacities and accelerate climate finance in their communique addressed to the top leadership of the cohort. Kevin Austin, deputy executive director at C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group - a network of 100 international cities and one of the global conveners of Urban-20 spoke to Shivani Singh about how to turn this agenda into action. Edited excerpts:

With the focus shifting to localising the sustainability agenda, how do you make city governments understand the nuances of the climate crisis?

We're going to solve the climate crisis only if we focus on implementation (of climate action) on ground. But there are three major barriers. The first is the ability to get data to identify the problems, to make good decisions, and to be able to use that information to convince the public. The second is the political will. That partly [requires] working with the politicians, so they understand the importance of action, but also working with critical stakeholders, civil society, business, etc. to enable them to support climate actions. The final barrier is the technical and financial capacity building, designing programmes and finding finances.

What kind of finances and technical capacities can be made available on priority to cities in the developing world that need support?

The global investment in urban climate finance totalled just around US$384 billion in 2017-18, which is far below the approximate $2-5 trillion needed annually. Only 9% of tracked project-level data is invested in urban adaptation finance. The level of funding needed goes well beyond the $100 billion in yearly finance commitments pledged by donors. As part of the Urban-20, our key ask is this financing. There are three elements to it.

The first is to disincentivise investments in fossil fuels. The second is to overhaul development finance, which (in turn) has two critical parts -- to set up a project preparation facility to support cities because they must design the project and work out the technical feasibility to get finance, and to support direct lending for cities.