New Innovations in Localizing Climate Finance
The evidence is overwhelming. Besides being the warmest year on record, 2016 saw an overwhelming number of “pollution peak” days in cities across the globe.
Paris, for instance, is regularly exposing more than 1.5 million inhabitants to pollution levels that do not respect European regulation. In Africa, imported fuel — low-cost but toxic — is poisoning those who live in Lagos, Dakar and elsewhere.
Multiple concerns are tied up in these situations, of course, including around public health and the environment. Yet the broadest policy changes will be brought about in the fight against climate change — and as is becoming increasingly recognized, cities lay at the forefront of those solutions.
Even as cities continue to commit to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions, however, local officials face a major challenge in piloting a shift to a low-carbon future: financing. And this is only exacerbated by national-level funding constraints that have limited public investment in recent years.

Paul Saad