Cities And Climate Change Initiative Ccci (Norway Funding)

Overall Objective: Residents of cities in developing countries and their urban systems begin to become more resilient to the impacts and climate change, and reduce their carbon emissions.

 We intend to achieve this objective through the following Expected Accomplishments (EAs):

•  EA1: The urban dimension is introduced into climate change agreements, strategies, policies, laws and regulations, and the climate change dimension is introduced into urban strategies, policies, laws and regulations

• EA2: Urban decision-makers and stakeholders have increased capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change, and the institutions that build their capacities have adapted their teaching curricula and research accordingly 

• EA3: Cities participating in CCCI develop and begin to implement pro-poor strategies to adapt to climate change and embrace low carbon growth trajectories

• EA4: A global network of partners begins to advocate for policies to help cities better address climate change, access climate finance, and manage knowledge.

The underlying development hypothesis here that relates the EAs to our Overall Objective is that together policy change and capacity building will lead to changes in behaviour. For example, policy reform at either the national or the local level (EAs Nos. 1 and 3, respectively), coupled with adequate institutional and human capacity (addressed in EA 2), will lead to actual reduced emissions from cities (part of Overall Objective). For further discussion of our strategy for implementing individual expected accomplishments, please see Section 2 of the CCCI Consolidated Strategy (May 2013), developed for discussion with the CCCI External Advisory Committee (available upon request).

CCCI has followed roughly this logical framework for the past several years. However in recent years sharp cuts in annual replenishments, coupled with the increased visibility of cities in international processes with related demands on UN-Habitat, have tended to reduce resources available for city-level work (EA 3).