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There is an increasingly unmet demand for sustainable, climate-friendly, and resilient infrastructure in cities, particularly in Africa and Asia where close to 90% of all urban population growth is expected to happen in the coming years. Accordingly a tremendous amount of sustainable infrastructure for cities needs to be built to cope with the rising numbers of inhabitants, the basic needs of the population and the challenges of climate change. Many cities will struggle in providing adequate sanitation, transport, energy and health services. Yet, cities from emerging and developing economies generally struggle to access finance.
Often, local governments must rely on fiscal transfers from national governments as they struggle to generate their revenues from local fees, charges or municipal taxes. At the same time, many sources of local revenue have collapsed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic recession.
Cities must increase their own revenues and diversify their funding sources to be able to promote a resilient climate transition. Yet, city governments often lack the capacity or resources to transform their climate mitigation/adaptation project ideas into sound and bankable infrastructure projects that will attract private capital.
The new City Climate Finance Gap Fund aims to support this early-stage of project development and thus contribute to close the financing gap for urban planning and infrastructure faced by cities in the developing world.
In this session, we bring together key stakeholders from local authorities, city networks, think tanks, as well as, financial institutions to exchange knowledge on the challenges of increasing municipal revenues and opportunities in preparing climate-friendly infrastructure projects in cities for a green recovery.
Viewers will listen in on discussions, which covers topics such as:
- Overview of the newly launched City Climate Finance Gap Fund and the types of projects it will support.
- The challenges and possibilities to increase municipal revenues in a post-Covid time
- How project promoters can identify and seek support from Project Preparation Facilities
- Other work developed by the Project Preparation Action Group of the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA)
Confirmed Speakers:
- Moderator: Priscilla Negreiros, Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA)
- Opening Remarks: Heike Henn, Deputy Director General and Commissioner for Climate Policy and Climate Financing, BMZ
Panelists:
- Giulia Macagno, Economist for sustainable urban Development at the European Investment Bank
- Germano Bremm , Secretary General for the Environment, City of Porto Alegre, Brazil
- George McCarthy, President and CEO, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- Justine Audrain, Deputy Programme Director at the Global Fund for Cities Development (FMDV)
Closing Remarks:
- Norbet Gorißen, Deputy Director General International Policy, BMU