Low Carbon City Development

Project Summary:

Goals to improve efficiency, resilience, and competitiveness are driving the building of greener cities. Sustainability need not come at the expense of growth, but the building of sustainable cities requires knowledge of challenges and GHG emissions expertise. KGGTF’s urban portfolio continues efforts started in Y1 by building human resource capacity to help cities plan sound climate programs based on green growth implementation standards. The three-year USD $1.37 million program, which will reach 150 cities by mid-2015, has completed a strategy paper and roadmap for developing a City Climate Planner Certification program. The program team has finalized an emission inventory training program, and the partners will meet to commit financial resources and identify roles to take the program forward. The program will certify its first group of professionals in the summer of 2015. The program is also helping build cities’ capacity to access private capital to finance low-carbon, climate resilient infrastructure. The Low-carbon Livable Cities initiative’s City Creditworthiness Academy held five-day workshops in Colombia, Tanzania, and Korea in 2014 for municipal finance officers from several dozen regional cities. The program will hold its final regional event in Senegal in 2015.

List of Activities:

• Building the human resource base that will help cities establish high quality climate plans based on technically sound and standardized methods
• Offering workshops that offer a set of intense training modules ranging from revenue management to climate smart capital investment planning, and from debt financing options to the enabling environment for sub-national finance
• Preparing summary reports detailing the outcomes of the academies, with a special focus on what creditworthiness impediments have been identified by the city participants as the most challenging going forward

Outcomes:

Output 1:

• Coalition partner workshops to discuss pressing program development issues
• Meetings with sovereign and/or local authorities to discuss deployment of the program within their jurisdiction
• Development of emission inventory training program and support materials
• Development of certification standards for certification focused on knowledge of citywide emission inventory development
• Development of certification standards for certification focused on knowledge of climate action plan development
• Institutions accredited to train individuals on different certification program elements
• Individuals participating in training programs related to personnel certification

Output 2:

• Cities attending Credit Worthiness Academy workshops
• Academy workshops that pursue implementation partnership agreements with the WB or other funding partner organizations
• Cities making demonstrable progress on two or more initiatives identified as part of their post-workshop roadmap
• New partnerships with external funding organizations

Outcomes:

The outcomes of this project will build and strengthen the capacities of individuals and public/private institutions of the Bank’s client countries to promote low carbon and climate resilient development. Ultimately, those holding the city climate planner certification can be expected to work within local government, civil society organizations, and consultancies supporting local climate work. In this regard, their presence will lead to tangible changes in local knowledge and conversations around local climate planning. In the short run, we expect to see a marked increase in the number of cities with comprehensive GHG inventories, while over the long run, more and more cities crafting climate change action plans that build on inventory data will be seen.

Collaboration with K-Partners and Others:

This project was launched in Gwangju, Korea, supported by the Gwangju Metropolitan City, the Gwangju-based city network Urban Environmental Accords, and 16 external organizations.