Ambitious City Promises

about Ambitious City Promises

In a rapidly urbanizing world, local governments and their communities play a pivotal role in tackling climate change and advancing sustainability. Climate action requires consistent local, regional, national, and global efforts to outpace prior ambitions, paired with communication, collaboration, self-evaluation, and open-minded exploration to co-create solutions.

Through Ambitious City Promises (ACP), cities in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam partnered with ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG), and each other through the funding from BMU’s International Climate Initiative (IKI) to reimagine their postures towards goal-setting and idea generation. Ultimately, rigorous engagement with 1,200 stakeholders paved each project city’s path to raising climate ambitions beyond their respective countries’ NDCs. Collectively, the three cities have committed to contributing to GHG emissions reduction and avoidance with a total of 918 actions by up to 46 million tCO2e by 2030 through their “City Promises”.

Ambitious City Promises sparked further inspirations of bottom up climate action planning. The Philippines’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) recognized the project methodology as model for mobilizing 32 Philippine cities’ contributions to the Philippines’ NDC under the follow-up program ‘Harnessing Cities Share’.