COP29 has faced significant criticism for its failure to deliver progress that matches the urgency and scale of the climate crisis. As global negotiations continue to fall short, Senior Researcher Dr Karen Barrass explores the vital role and implications of local climate action in this blog.
COP29 has been subject of much criticism for its failure to deliver progress proportional to the urgency and scale of the challenge. A familiar story for many COPs past. But as scientific evidence keeps confirming and as increasing extreme climate induced weather events unfold across the globe, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are reaching tipping points much sooner than expected. Time is running out faster than anticipated and drastic emission reductions are needed now in order to meet the Paris agreement objectives to ‘keep 1.5 alive’ – limiting pre-industrial warming to 1.5 degrees. So the lack of tangible progress is troublesome.
Whilst the finance agreement reached in Baku is welcome, as we’ve seen in recent years, actual finance flows have been slow to emerge and fractional compared to the investment needed. The $300 billion a year pledged – which will see $1.3 trillion mobilised in the next decade. But $1.3 trillion is needed annually – such incremental change can only set us up to fail.
And there are other significant developments globally that also indicate that national and international progress via national delivery may be further hampered in the coming years. The election of President Trump for example, calls into question the short-term role of the US, seeing it once again switch from international leader to potential laggard status. Germany, Australia and Canada all have elections next year and there is a chance that climate will be deprioritised by incumbents there too.

These international shifts are enabling a refocus on the crucial role of subnational governments in tackling this most urgent of problems. Mobilising local communities and implementing ambitious on the ground developments that are not just reducing emissions, but capable of building resilience and other social, environmental and economic benefits too. This place-based action has quietly been delivering progress for the past 20 years, filling in and compensating for national inaction across the globe. What we need to see now is more formal recognition of this key role, and importantly a means of encapsulating and designing this progress into the international system.
In 2021, the Glasgow Pact text from COP26 went some way towards this, highlighting for the first time the important role of local governments. It was followed by the creation of the Coaltion for High Ambition Multilateral Partnerships for Climate Action – or CHAMP, which set out at COP28 to:
“enhance cooperation, where applicable and appropriate, with our subnational governments in the planning, financing, implementation, and monitoring of climate strategies, including but not limited to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and Long Term Low-Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS), to maximise climate action, including through coalitions such as the NDC Partnership, with a view towards collectively pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and increase adaptation and resilience.“1
CHAMP currently has 74 national signatories, and represents one of the primary formal ways in which subnational governments can engage in the international process. At COP29 developments on this agenda were relatively modest, there was the COP29 Declaration on Multisectoral Actions Pathways (MAP) to Resilient and Healthy Cities and the Baku Continuity Coalition for Urban Climate Action, which takes a multisectoral and multilevel approach to continuity and coherence between COP, UNFCCC and UN Habitat urban processes.
On the peripheries, COP29’s Ministerial Meeting(s) on Urbanization and Climate Change included a commitment to continuity between the urban initiatives of COP27, COP28, COP29 and COP30. Local and regional governments sent more than 100+ political leaders to Baku and the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency delegates participated in more than 170 events across the negotiations space, plenary sessions, Pavilions and Green Zone.2 At COP29’s Urbanization Day (20 Nov), LGMA released its COP29 Joint Position,3 which called for the urgent acceleration of inclusive, multilevel, and gender-responsive climate action by embedding local and subnational governments within new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
And on this front, glimpses of positive momentum can be gleaned. Whilst it was disappointing that no progress was made on the global stocktake at COP29, meaning that there is a lot of work to do before parties reconvene in Brazil next year. Yet Brazil, the UAE and the UK announced their 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution targets (NDCs) ahead of the 2025 deadline, sending signals to the international community that the ‘racheting up’ of progress continues. Significantly Brazil’s NDC includes the establishment of a ‘Commitment to Climate Federalism’ between the Union, states and municipalities of Brazil. Brazil established the Commitment to Climate Federalism. This is significant because it recognises and underlines the crucial role of local governments in the NDC and in the delivery of its objectives.
With the IPCC also working on their special report on the role of cities, for launch next year, 2025 is shaping up to potentially be a crucial point in time to embed place-based delivery in our collective responses to shore up the future.
It will be interesting to see how many other NDCs also take this step of integrating local considerations and actions. The UK will be submitting their NDC ahead of the February 2025 deadline, having announced the commitment at COP29 to an NDC with an 81% reduction on 1990 levels by 2035. Given recent developments such as the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change4, announced in early December with measures including multi-year funding settlements for local authorities and changes to the planning and investment systems making it easier for local authorities to assist in the delivery of the government’s mission to become a ‘clean energy superpower.’ If the UK government takes steps to formally recognise the role of local authorities in its NDC it sends a positive signal to local authorities.
And it also means that the Centre for Climate Engagement’s work on the Locally Determined Contribution (LDC) for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Guidance Framework comes at a crucial time. By developing a LDC it is possible for local authorities to scope, plan and deliver on the proportion of emissions a particular place is responsible for. It offers the potential to scale, compare and take stock of the role of each constituent local authority in a fair and transparent way. Taking Brazil’s lead of acknowledging local authorities in its NDC, we have a significant opportunity to take the learnings from the LDC project which develops a standardised toolkit for local authorities to determine their own areas of influence, carbon budget and action pathway, with ultimately the opportunity to feed into the NDC. Over the next five years, before the next Global Stocktake, there is an opportunity to truly embed local delivery into national plans, to have comprehensive national plans that are informed by what is happening locally and demonstrate true progress on the international stage.

As the LDC project reaches a critical point, we have a round of 4 stakeholder workshops in early 2025 to test the draft guidance framework. If you are interested to hear more, please contact klb98@hughes.cam.ac.uk
Read a summary of our LDC workshops to date: https://climatehughes.org/ldc-workshops-event-summary/
[3] https://www.cities-and-regions.org/cop29/cop29-lgma-joint-position/
[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/plan-for-change