Enhancing NDCs through urban climate action

Inclusion of urban climate action and subnational government stakeholders in NDC formulation, priority setting, targets, governance and implementation has the potential to support government efforts to enhance ambition and delivery of NDCs.

Similarly, the NDCs can inform urban policies and priority setting. Member States have requested support on how best to integrate human settlement and urban issues into their NDCs1 and this guide aims to offer this in an applied manner.

The intention of this guide is to support Member States to:

• Enhance the ambition of their NDCs in the current 2020 and future revision processes, by harnessing the potential of human settlements and urban climate action to deliver a high quality of life while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 
• Support a more integrated approach to NDC development and implementation across national and local governments.
• Implement their NDCs by aligning the activities of urban stakeholders behind a common vision for human settlements.
• Embed their climate objectives into urban decision-making across all sectors of government.
• Create the enabling frameworks towards the implementation of high-ambition NDCs at sub-national level and help climate authorities to engage with urban authorities through a common basis of language and understanding.

This UN-Habitat publication was produced in a collaborative effort with a wide variety of expert contributors from; Arup, the Coalition for Urban Transitions, C40, the Environment, Forest & Climate Change Commission of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia , GIZ , Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, Global Green Growth Institute, Go Green for Climate, ICLEI, the NDC Partnership, REN21, UNDP, UNEP, UNFCCC, and the University of Southern Denmark .