When it comes to urban climate adaptation, what is COP good for?
- Urban areas face disproportionate climate exposure yet remain structurally excluded from UNFCCC negotiations.
- COP30 in Belém saw delegates wade through floodwaters on opening day, while urban adaptation went largely unaddressed.
- Cities are driving adaptation innovation independently, through networks like C40, outside the COP framework.
- Parties should be required to consult subnational governments when developing NAPs and NDCs.
- The adaptation finance gap remains unresolved, as avoided-loss projects struggle to attract private investment.
At COP30 in Belem, Brazil, delegates waded through floodwaters to access the Blue Zone, after an intense rainstorm had flooded the city streets on the opening days of the conference. From storms to extreme heat, the climate conditions throughout the conference highlighted the adaptation challenges facing cities, and yet urban resilience was barely on the negotiating table, reflecting a legacy of underrepresentation that has left cities largely outside the UNFCCC’s core processes.
Urban adaptation at COP: progress and persistent gaps
The underrepresentation of urban adaptation at COP30 is a product of the conference’s historical bias toward the mitigation agenda and structural orientation to national governments. It was only at COP21 in Paris that subnational action and adaptation entered the conversation in a substantive way, with the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency1 and Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)2. However, ten years after Paris, cities can only participate through the LGMA observer constituency and the GGA lacks operational focus.
That needs to change – and fast. Exposure to climate hazards is increasing more rapidly in cities; understood here as densely populated zones, and urban areas highly exposed to climate change are growing. From wildfires in Los Angeles to deadly flooding in Kinshasa, cities are on the forefront of extreme weather events that are becoming increasingly frequent and impactful due to climate change.
But cities are also on the forefront of climate action. The Local Leaders Forum3, hosted in Rio de Janeiro preceding COP30, highlighted the breadth and depth of urban climate action. From tree planting in Freetown to stormwater infrastructure in Adelaide4, cities shared bold ideas and innovative actions to address climate change. Urban resilience efforts are scaling up rapidly, with local governments implementing 10 times more adaptation actions in 20245 than in 2014. Yet even as cities lead implementation, COP governance remains in the hands of national governments
The historic underrepresentation of urban adaptation at COP begs the question: Can a global, state-centric process designed around national mitigation, be used to meaningfully address something as local as urban adaptation? And if so, how exactly should COPs do this? At its core, this question involves three key issues.
#1 Governance: Who sets the goals and strategy for climate adaptation?
Without negotiator status, cities lack a voice in setting global goals and strategy on climate adaptation at COP. However, at the national level, cities are increasingly included in governance of climate action. A UNFCCC analysis6 of the 67 new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted prior to COP30 found that 69% explicitly mentioned involving subnational entities in adaptation planning. A plan launched during COP307 aims to accelerate this progress toward subnational integration in 100 NDCs by 2028. COP30’s host, Brazil, has been a leading example, engaging local officials to shape its updated national adaptation plan8 and co-leading the Coalition for High Ambition Multi-level Partnership9 (CHAMP). With the EU joining ahead of COP30, CHAMP now represents 78 countries committed to including subnational actors in national climate governance.
The increased urban content in new NDCs, Brazilian success story, and growth of CHAMP are all promising signs. However, COP needs to go one step further and formalise subnational inclusion. Giving cities negotiator status is not the answer: the negotiating table is already crowded and complex enough. But cities should be engaged in national-level processes to set the climate adaptation agenda, and COP can facilitate this integration by requiring Parties to consult cities when developing NAPs and NDCs.
#2 Implementation: What solutions will we use to get there?
Around the world, cities are piloting innovative climate adaptation solutions: flood warning systems in Rio, heat relief training in Phoenix, and pocket forests in Santiago are just a few examples. There is enormous benefit to bringing local leaders together to share best practices, so that cities with less-developed adaptation agendas can learn from cities who have already piloted solutions. But much of this exchange occurs outside COP, through networks like C40 and GCoM, and through events like the Local Leaders Forum. With cities already sharing ideas through these channels, does COP add to their capacity to implement solutions?
Ultimately, COP is built for negotiation, not implementation. The conference can accelerate action by serving as a launch point for initiatives like the Beat the Heat Implementation Drive, but implementation depends on local leadership, technical capacity, and budgets, factors beyond COP’s mandate. And while there’s benefit to in-person engagement for cities to transfer knowledge and ideate adaptation solutions, COP is not essential for this purpose: dedicated city networks are already fulfilling this role. COP can inspire momentum, but it is not meant to execute local adaptation.
#3 Finance: How will we fund it?
Despite clear economic benefits from investing in resilience, there is a massive global adaptation funding gap. A recent WRI report10 found that every $1 invested in adaptation can yield $10.50 in benefits, but data suggests that less than 15¢ per $1 devoted to climate finance supports adaptation. The gap is even more pronounced in cities, where the annual financing gap for climate adaptation11 is between €177 and €334 billion.
Part of the explanation is economic: adaptation generates avoided losses rather than revenue. Whereas mitigation-focused renewable energy projects produce measurable returns, adaptation projects like flood defences only produce benefits through reduced costs when a hazard occurs. The uncertainty of climate risk complicates quantification of these avoided losses, undermining the investment case for adaptation.
COP can help mobilise funding to address urban climate adaptation through private philanthropic commitments and public country-level pledges. Yet at COP30, country pledges to adaptation financing mechanisms fell woefully short. Only $135 million had been pledged12 to the Adaptation Fund by the end of the conference, less than half of its $350 million goal. Moreover, COP30 failed to operationalise the goal to triple climate finance by 2035, which is financially feasible13 but highly unlikely without binding language.
While COP30 did not deliver the necessary structural reforms to mobilise sustained funding for local adaptation efforts, there are several ways future conferences could help address financing barriers:
- National reporting on urban adaptation finance flows: Access to adaptation finance through the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) is often restricted to national governments. While COP cannot directly change the design of funding mechanisms, it can encourage countries to support cities in applying for funding and require countries to report how much adaptation finance reaches subnational actors. This metric is essential for accountability but is currently missing from the GGA indicator framework finalised at COP30 under the UAE–Belém Work Programme.
- Subnational engagement mechanisms in country platforms: At COP30, fourteen countries announced Country Platforms, national-level funding frameworks for cohesive climate investment strategies. Country Platforms have enormous potential to localise climate finance by making it simpler and easier for cities to access climate finance through a single mechanism. Many Country Platforms are developed in partnership with the GCF, an operating entity of the UNFCCC, empowering COP to shape how these platforms are structured and implemented. To unlock this potential, COP should call on countries and partners to design subnational engagement into Country Platforms and include cities from inception.
- Urban adaptation finance windows: COP could encourage the creation of urban adaptation funding windows, or ring-fenced financing flows focused on climate resilience in cities. This approach has already been piloted through the EBRD’s €5 billion Green Cities program, which provides a dedicated channel for supporting sustainable, resilient urban projects. COP can serve as a forum to consolidate support and momentum for scaling urban adaptation finance windows at other multi-lateral banks and funds.
Other financing solutions exist to address barriers to funding urban adaptation, but COP is uniquely positioned to make a difference in these three key areas. Historically, a lack of frameworks, indicators, or funds, limited COP’s capacity to direct resources to urban resilience. However, as the adaptation finance landscape matures through GGA indicators, Country Platforms, and growing donor attention, it is essential to embed multilevel governance now. Retrofitting financial structures will be far more difficult and far less effective than embedding subnational actors from the outset.
Conclusion
COP30 opened with severe flooding and closed with an unexpected fire at the venue, but the real crisis was political: negotiations failed to deliver meaningful progress on the urban adaptation agenda. Beyond Belém, COP30 yet again exposed a deeper structural reality: a process designed for national-level mitigation is struggling to support the local adaptation that the climate crisis now demands.
Cities will continue to lead the global adaptation agenda with or without COP. But the UNFCCC process can reshape governance and finance to better support local adaptation by mandating subnational consultation in NAPs, ensuring Country Platforms embed cities from the start, and tracking local adaptation finance flows. Cities are already adapting. Can COP adapt too?
