Daring Cities Reports

Daring Cities 2023 Report: A just and equitable climate emergency response

Daring Cities 2023 aimed to empower urban decision-makers to lead the response to the climate emergency, with a focus on how to ensure the climate emergency response also supports the just transition. This edition continued to provide a platform to convene representatives of all levels of government to strategize and commit to multi-level, whole-of-society climate action that addresses the climate emergency, while further developing sustainable and resilient urban systems.

Daring Cities 2023 sought to enhance and accelerate local and urban climate action through multi-level governance, engagement, and delivery to transform cities to be healthy, sustainable, just, inclusive, low-emission and resilient urban systems for a better urban future for all.

Sessions aimed to identify top challenges, obstacles, and knowledge gaps to effective and just multilevel climate action as perceived by local, regional, and national governments, and present solutions and opportunities for addressing and overcoming these barriers.

To learn more about the key moments and outcomes of Daring Cities 2023 download the full report. 

Daring Cities 2022 Report: Responding to the Climate Emergency through finance

Our world is on life support. The year 2022 has been filled with “unprecedented”, “once in lifetime”, “first-ever” climate disasters like droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme temperatures in every corner of the world. Yet a comprehensive, global response to the climate emergency has been largely stalled due to the COVID-19 recovery, war, and threats of recession.

In addition, cities, towns and regions, even the most daring ones, continue to report financing as a main barrier to responding to the climate emergency.

Daring Cities 2022 kicked off on 3 October 2022, World Habitat Day and was attended by 1,800 ambitious climate action leaders, practitioners and change-makers. The five-day global virtual forum consisted of seven high level dialogues and thirteen workshops. The forum focused on exchanging best practices, providing technical training, and sharing timely insights from leaders taking bold climate action and tackling the multifaceted challenges of climate emergency finance.

To learn more about this year focus on finance and the three cornerstones (Exchange – Disseminate – Advocate), download the full report. 

Daring Cities 2021 Report: Leading in the Climate Emergency

In 2021, the international climate stage was even more important, with so much put on hold during the first year of the pandemic. Despite the uncertainties regarding the global process, neither the climate and biodiversity emergencies, nor the COVID-19 response, recovery and redesign processes at the national and local levels stopped. Acknowledging the need to feed into the global advocacy processes that clustered at the end of 2021, Daring Cities expanded into a three-part campaign to ensure that local and regional governments would be heard throughout Urban October into the climate COP in Glasgow:

  • Cornerstone 1 – Exchange
  • Cornerstone 2 – Disseminate
  • Cornerstone 3 – Advocate

To know more about the cornerstones download the Daring Cities 2021 report. It summarizes the visionary leadership, the active sharing of knowledge, and the coherent, united voice which underpins the necessary collaborative action

Daring Cities 2020 Report: Know More, Act Better, Lead Together

When ICLEI and our partners in the Federal City of Bonn and the German government began formulating a way to build on the 10-year legacy of the Resilient Cities Congress series, we were conceiving an event that could speak to, and serve, the decade before us – humanity’s best chance of preserving a livable future for its inhabitants. The report on our first virtual gathering – Daring Cities 2020 – is available for download.

Without the ability to travel, Daring Cities successfully reimagined how we connect, shifting from in-person to a virtual platform (and from days to weeks of sessions), ultimately providing the year’s most accessible space for dialogue. It was also ICLEI’s most inclusive event yet, with sessions delivered in eight languages that engaged 4,600+ participants in 150+ countries.

Over 850 local and regional governments attended the event, getting access to 98 sessions with speakers such as the United Nations Secretary General and leaders from eight UN agencies, as well as hundreds of city leaders from across the world. 

Overall, we saw three distinct outcomes of Daring Cities. To read about them, download the full report. 

Report cover for the Daring Cities 2020 report