On 14 November, local and regional governments met in Marrakech, Morocco, for the Climate Summit for Local and Regional Leaders, where they approved the “Marrakech Roadmap for Action”. The Summit was attended by 1,100 participants from 114 countries, representing more than 780 local and regional governments. There was wide representation of the African continent from 50 countries, as well as 11 representatives from Small Islands States.
The Climate Summit was held in the framework of the 22nd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22), under the theme, "Financing the sustainable mutation of Territories”, and was the second such Summit held since the inaugural event during the COP 21 in Paris in December 2015.
The "Marrakech Roadmap for Action: For a Global Action Framework towards Localizing Climate Finance, the Call of Cities and Regions of the World" will launch two important actions: the launch of a Global Campaign for localizing Climate Finance in 2017 and the implementation of a Global Action Framework for localizing Climate Finance by 2020.
In the text of the Roadmap, local and regional governments welcome the entry into force of the Paris Agreement on 4 November and recall the “inalienable unity” of the international agenda for sustainable development and the structural links between the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, the SDGs, the Paris Agreement, and the New Urban Agenda.
They go on to reaffirm the role of local and regional governments as primary partners of Member States in the battle against climate change. The Marrakech Call for Action highlights local and regional governments’ ongoing mobilization through initiatives such as the Global Covenant of Mayors, the Compact of States and Regions, RegionsAdapt and the Under2MOU, as well as the prioritization of the fight against climate change in the priorities of their international networks, their active presence in international summits, their solidarity through decentralized cooperation agreements, and their daily activities at local and regional levels.
However, local and regional governments also warn in the Call that “the resources towards meeting the displayed ambition of the international community continue to be lacking, especially given the responsibilities transferred to the local and regional governments in the framework of decentralization processes.” In response to this urgent challenge, they underline the need “to renovate the financial ecosystem of global investments to make them climate-compatible, and to create directing pointers for its fluxes primarily towards sustainable development at the subnational and local levels.”
The Marrakech Call for Action also demands specific support for territories made vulnerable by the adverse effects of climate change and for public and private funds to be mobilized at all levels to support adaptation measures. In particular, it reaffirms the urgency of supporting the implementation of the CCFLA recommendations, integrated in the 2015 report State of City Climate Finance.
The Call includes three blocks of concrete recommendations to:
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Strengthen the capacity of local and regional governments to take action, and support the process of project preparation and their funding
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Integrate the local and regional dimensions in the undergoing mutation of the global financial ecosystem
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Support capitalization, transfer of knowledge and practices, and access to available funding sources, and to their engineering
Finally, the Call closes with the commitment by local and regional government networks to launch a Global Campaign for Localizing Climate Finance in 2017 to accelerate the mobilization of sub-national financing, coordinated with the Global Partnership for Localizing Finance, the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) and public and private funding coalitions.
More information:
Climate Summit for Local and Regional Leaders
