three-quarters of emissions from energy consumption, a low-carbon, climate-resilient urban transition is an essential component towards achieving national targets and priorities and globally set goals and commitments (Coalition for Urban Transitions 2019).
Multiple levels of governance The functions and responses of cities are shaped by decisions taken by actors and the institutions both within and beyond their boundaries, which may have contradictory and unsustainable goals. In practice, cities can act as the frontlines for environmentally sustainable and inclusive development (Guterres 2019) and local interventions are imperative to advance sustainable development not only at the city level, but also nationally and globally. When a city is nested within an environmentally unsustainable regional or national context and policy framework, with unclear or limited mandates to subnational governments, a city’s capacity for transformation is limited. The role of national policymakers and policies in shaping urban development cannot be ignored. Urban leaders can take bold steps towards improving the planning and functioning of their cities, but decisions made by national governments can significantly affect progress. As a result, national governments will continue to play a decisive role in the environmental sustainability of cities with positive or negative impacts for cities and globally (Rode, Heeckt and Cruz 2019).
In many places, even if cities want to take positive action, unfavourable and centralized national policies can lock in environmentally unsustainable business-as-usual pathways at the local level. For instance, most cities rely on national or regional centralized energy systems based on fossil fuels that produce high emissions. These broader governance and institutional frameworks may limit cities’ ability to take action, for instance to self-generate and provide clean energy, if inhibited by national policies.
Infrastructure systems and services are key for the functioning of cities and account for a significant share of emissions. However, many policies and decisions in this area are made at the national level. This means that national policies can play a crucial role in either locking cities into high-emission trajectories, for example, by building highways, rather than supporting public transportation options or enabling zero-carbon development within cities. Creating enabling environments nationally, especially if it comes with locally accessible funding options, can have an immediate and massive positive impact. For instance, in India, the national government has launched a National Electric Mobility Mission Plan to promote energy-efficient low-carbon development. The plan involves the introduction of electric vehicles for multimodal public transport in several cities, a measure that is aligned with promoting low-carbon and environmentally sustainable development in cities (Yenneti et al. 2019).
While many cities continue to function under the umbrella of centralized governance and institutional frameworks, some have tried to go beyond this. For example, in South Africa, where the energy supply is heavily reliant on fossil fuels (80 per cent of the energy supply depends on coal),
the City of Cape Town has designed its Small-Scale Embedded Generation programme to accelerate the low- carbon transition by promoting local energy production. The programme empowers the city’s leadership and promotes more environmentally sustainable and decentralized urban development through diversifying the energy mix and the resale of electricity (C40 Cities and Nordic Sustainability 2019). The city’s adoption of an environmentally sustainable and more reliable alternative to meet its energy needs and reduce its dependency on fossil fuels is an example of an agent of change that can drive environmentally sustainable and just transitions. Recently, the South African government increased the allowable self-generation of electricity exponentially to 100MW, immediately driving the private sector and cities alike to work towards new, now economically viable clean energy solutions for a low-carbon future and more reliable supply of power.
Well-aligned, multi-level governance systems that include all levels of governments enable each level of government to work where it is best placed to implement sustainable development solutions.
Challenges at the city level City-level implementation is essential for meeting most international commitments (SDGs, NDCs, NUA). Yet in most cases, cities are not fully invited and engaged in national and international agenda setting, decision-making, funding options and implementation strategies (UN-Habitat 2020). This is a missed opportunity, since including cities in the process enables and empowers them, providing additional capacity and enabling implementation at the local level.
Local governments are producing their own voluntary reviews to complement official voluntary national reviews of the implementation of the SDGs. This puts cities in the spotlight for implementation (International Institute for Sustainable Development [IISD] 2019). However, environmentally sustainable and equitable urban transformations will require substantial investment. For instance, even the largest and most capable city governments can only deliver a fraction of their emission reduction targets as part of their country’s NDCs due to the lack of financial resources (UN-Habitat 2020). Most urban local governments are underfunded, especially for infrastructure, services and socially and environmentally responsible public projects. Most depend on centrally allocated funds from national policies, programmes and missions earmarked for urban development (Guha and Chakrabarti 2020). This fiscal dependence brings constraints, partly related to the priority of cities and urban regions in broader national development and environmental sustainability strategies. Access to financing remains a critical factor to enable cities to implement these global goals on the ground and new, innovative and blended finance options are critically needed by cities the world over.
In some cases, cities continue to play an ambiguous role in national priorities or are perceived as threats to national identity and power structures (UN-Habitat 2014). This situation is often reflected in ambivalent policies and attempts to curtail the autonomy of cities, leaving
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