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Develop and deploy bottom-up models of climate action planning: Ambitious City Promises demonstrated the impact of bottom-up climate action by engaging city residents and integrating stakeholder pledges into the City Promises. By consolidating and integrating community pledges into local action plans, cities can quantify community contributions and make the case for greater ambition at all levels of government. In this way, Ambitious City Promises created new climate leaders at the municipal and community level.

Establish lasting mechanisms for knowledge sharing: Ambitious City Promises strengthened climate action by spreading good practices through city-to-city exchange and support. Inspired by the Promise of Seoul, this project, with the support of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, guides participating cities in establishing mechanisms that allow for peer learning while supporting and aligning with national climate action plans and policies.

Contribute to local, national and global climate goals: Ambitious City Promises accelerated ambitious climate action at the local level by equipping cities to define and implement low emission development strategies through City Promises shaped by inclusive, participatory processes. These Ambitious City Promises are designed to increase impact and allow for increasingly significant contributions to national and global climate goals.

Empowering citizens: The project cities saw that pursuing the city-level climate targets alone is not sufficient to achieve the desired results and impacts. Combining climate targets with social aspects amplifies synergies and empowers stakeholders to commit to climate actions. Although many local governments include public participation as part of their processes, communication often flows in one direction: top-down. ACP was able to elevate the public’s voice and activate citizens’ potential as key contributors to climate actions through its consultation method. The process also served as a capacity building opportunity for citizens to make informed decisions, as well as inspire city governments to develop transformative and collaborative climate actions.

Peer-to-peer exchange: Placing peer-to-peer exchange at the core of the capacity building activities allowed cities to find commonalities in their approaches to addressing urban challenges. Members learned from and with each other. Implementing the peer learning methodology showed that replicating the proof of concept (while carefully adapting the approach to the local context) has many advantages, particularly because of the alignment between the suggested and current institutional arrangements and local government priorities. This explains why the Promise of Seoul model was an effective approach in deconstructing the concept of climate change mitigation: it related goals to the sectors (e.g. energy, transport, air quality, waste) that directly affect both mandates of local governments and citizens’ daily lives.

Promising the ambitions: The notion of stakeholders making promises for climate action is distinct to ACP’s approach to local climate action planning, reflecting the experience of SMG’s Promise of Seoul. A ‘promise’ implies a different posture towards a local government’s climate ambition, especially as communities and stakeholders can feel distanced from international goals (e.g. Paris Agreement). Through the project, model cities Jakarta, Pasig, and Hanoi reimagined climate action planning into a more tangible, accountable, and motivational enterprise. Their experiences demonstrated that accounting for and supporting local contributions can be a key driver of NDC implementation. They nurtured a culture of climate action among leaders, staff, and community stakeholders to become climate advocates.