Daring Cities 2024, organized by ICLEI and hosted by the Federal City of Bonn, aims to strengthen the capacity and engagement of local and regional government leaders in the international climate dialogue, connecting them to the broader agenda of upcoming COPs and ensuring their pivotal role in advancing towards new climate goals in advance of UNFCCC COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in 2025.
Building on the success and insights from previous years, Daring Cities 2024 will explore the theme of collective action in the face of the climate emergency. The event will facilitate exchanges among policymakers, technical experts, and leaders from around the world to share knowledge, showcase innovative climate actions, and foster ambitious and unlikely collaborations. Daring Cities 2024 is designed to empower local and regional governments to become leaders in climate action, advocating for integrated solutions that address the interconnected challenges of the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, and urban resilience.
As Daring Cities 2024 unfolds, participants will engage in a series of dialogues, workshops, and high-level roundtables designed to bridge gaps between national and subnational climate actions. The event’s structure, built around the Know-Act-Lead approach, aims to elevate the discourse on climate action by providing a platform for sharing cutting-edge research, best practices, and innovative solutions. Key sessions will focus on the implementation of the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (CHAMP) initiative for Climate Action, exploring ways to enhance collaboration across government levels and sectors, and identifying pathways for integrating local actions into national and international climate agendas.
Highlighting the importance of the CHAMP initiative launched at UNFCCC COP28, Daring Cities 2024 focuses on fostering collaboration between national and subnational governments to accelerate climate action. This initiative underscores the event’s commitment to bridging gaps and ensuring effective strategies are in place for the submission of enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by UNFCCC COP30.
Emphasizing the theme of addressing the climate emergency through integrated and holistic solutions, Daring Cities 2024 is dedicated to exploring interconnected factors such as food and nature, within urban policies. This approach ensures comprehensive outcomes for society and the planet.
By aligning with the outcomes of major UN conferences in the past, such as the UNFCCC COP28, and planning for CBD COP16, UNCCD COP16, UNFCCC COP29 and COP30, Daring Cities 2024 serves as a critical platform for local governments to understand and engage
with global climate processes, enhancing their role in achieving international climate goals.
Recognizing the need for innovative collaborations, Daring Cities 2024 seeks to create spaces for unlikely and unusual connections within the climate action sphere. By bringing together actors from various policy areas and sectors, the event encourages the sharing of diverse perspectives and experiences, aiming to unlock new pathways for addressing the climate emergency.
Daring Cities is a community for diverse stakeholders to inform local, subnational and national efforts, as well as global processes by strengthening partnerships, building capacity and enhancing knowledge exchange to activate climate emergency response.
Daring Cities is creating a vision of what we want our cities, towns and regions to look like by 2030.
The solutions for the climate crisis exist. We need leadership and support to execute on them. Daring Cities is the spark to ignite a multilevel response to the climate emergency.
The framework of Daring Cities 2024 is anchored in the three pivotal cornerstones of Reflect, Exchange, and Advocate. “Reflect” serves as the foundation, facilitating a period of introspection and assessment of past climate actions and outcomes, particularly those of UNFCCC COP28, to ensure a seamless transition into the current year’s initiatives. The “Exchange” cornerstone focuses on fostering dialogues and sharing insights across local and regional governments, technical experts, and policymakers, emphasizing the importance of multilevel collaboration and the dissemination of cutting-edge knowledge and effective climate action practices. Lastly, “Advocate” extends the reach of Daring Cities 2024 beyond its immediate community, empowering representatives to carry the event’s key messages into wider arenas, including major international environmental conferences, with efforts culminating at UNFCCC COP29. This phase of advocacy is critical for influencing and integrating local/regional climate action into national and global agendas.