On 12 December Urban-LEDS II, together with partnering projects Connecting Nature and CLEVER City projects are coming together in Madrid for a joint working session alongside this year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 25 (2-13 Dec 2019) to scale up city contributions to the Paris Agreement.
Upon invitation by Urban-LEDS II partner city Madrid, host to this year’s COP, the joint event will spotlight drivers and obstacles to accelerating transformative, local integrated climate action in line with the Paris Agreement. Under facilitation of Madrid, invited project cities will present their lessons learned, and the main challenges addressed from implementing key emission reduction and nature-based solution projects to their city peers.
Debates will furthermore address the role of ambitious local climate actions plans for the nationally determined emission reduction contributions (NDCs) to be submitted by national governments to the UNFCCC next year.
Urban-LEDS cities from across the globe had set the groundwork for the working session in Madrid during their inaugural 8-day European study trip in June this year, by re-affirming their climate action ambitions and settling on a set of priority areas for future cooperation, including best practices and replicable projects to meet international emission reduction requirements.
At this occasion, the city of Madrid will not only introduce its large-scale sustainable mobility plan, but also organise site visits to the Waste Management Centre of Valdemingomez and the Madrid Rio Urban Regeneration Project for attending city partners.
On 13 December Urban-LEDS cities and partners are furthermore foreseen to contribute to the “Transition to a 1.5 world: accelerating climate action through international urban cooperation” side event in the Italian Pavilion.
Hear directly from Urban-LEDS city representatives from Helsinki, Bologna and Madrid in our video interview section about their city’s climate ambitions, the role of local governments for reaching international climate targets and some of their key actions and priority areas in the coming years.