Planners For Climate Action: Urban and Territorial Planning As Means to Carbon Reduction and Community Resilience

Cities emit a significant portion of the world's greenhouse gases and are homes to concentrated populations that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This networking event will present key city planning successes at climate action and will provide opportunity for leaders of the planning profession to envision ways to better promote such actions and share experiences regionally and globally. We will leave with an agenda for training, research, and publication to build planning capacity in support of the Paris Agreement and the New Urban Agenda.

Sub-national governments have been rising in visibility as an important type of non-State actor in the climate action framework. Partners launched several multi-stakeholder 'city' initiatives at a 2014 Ban Ki-moon Climate Summit. The 2015 Paris Agreement explicitly mentions 'cities and subnational authorities' as one type of non-Party stakeholder that is invited to 'scale up' its efforts. Then at COP-23 in Bonn, Planners for Climate Action initiated under the Marrakesh Partnership.

Urban and regional planners have a key role to play in helping cities address climate change. The IPCC (2014) suggests that most of the emissions attributed to cities are embedded in urban infrastructure and city form. A focus on electricity (renewable and efficient) is therefore not sufficient. Compact urban development patterns may make public transportation more viable, leading to reduced greenhouse gas emissions; meanwhile in the long-term land use controls will profoundly affect the exposure of vulnerable populations to climate-related natural hazards such as flooding and landslides.

The role of city and regional planners and plans in addressing climate change is made explicit in the New Urban Agenda, as well as in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. If we are to meet SDG13, increased actions by cities and urban areas are essential actors.