Global, Brazil, Colombia

Putting Cities at the Center of Climate Action

Even when the climate action spotlight is on global summits and national pledges, much of the work of cutting emissions and building resilience happens close to home. Cities and other subnational governments — provinces, states, regions — decide how people move, how buildings are powered, where new housing is built, and how communities deal with heat, floods, and air pollution. WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities focuses on turning climate ambition into urban action that people can feel in their daily lives.

One of the biggest levers for change is strengthening countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs — the national climate plans that sit at the center of the Paris Agreement. Too often, NDCs have been written as national strategies without a clear pathway for delivery at the local level. “Multilevel governance” closes that gap by encouraging national governments and subnational leaders to plan together, align policies and budgets, and track progress in ways that reflect what it takes to implement climate solutions on the ground.

To make that collaboration the norm rather than the exception, WRI worked closely with subnational networks and organizations to help the COP28 presidency (UAE) and Bloomberg Philanthropies to launch the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships for Climate Action, known as CHAMP. CHAMP is a practical commitment: countries endorse a pledge to work with cities and regions to ensure that subnational priorities and investment needs are better reflected in the development and implementation of NDCs and other critical national climate plans that form the backbone of the Paris Agreement.

The coalition’s rapid growth shows how quickly this idea has gained traction. By the end of 2025, CHAMP included 77 endorsers and the EU, representing nearly 36% of the global population, 69% of global GDP, and 40% of global emissions. That momentum carried into COP30 in Belém, Brazil, where multilevel action was widely recognized as a prerequisite for moving from lofty ambition to implementation that affects people’s lives.

Helping Communities Support National Commitments in Colombia

CHAMP is already changing what climate planning looks like in practice. In Colombia, for example, cities played an active role in shaping the country’s next-generation NDC through a structured consultation process. This helped ensure that national commitments are supported by the communities they are intended to serve and are more likely to be implemented effectively. Colombia’s city-level initiatives include overhauling public transport fleets and setting a target of 600,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030, to stimulate the local EV market and catalyze recharging infrastructure.

Just as importantly, CHAMP is helping to connect plans to finance. Reflecting city priorities in national strategies is important but is not enough on its own to unlock investment. Stronger multilevel governance can help address the deeper barriers that often block the financing needed for big changes, such as weak coordination, limited project preparation capacity and fragmented funding pathways. Last year, the COP30 Local Leaders Forum hosted by the COP30 presidency of Brazil and Bloomberg Philanthropies in Rio de Janeiro helped elevate that investment pipeline, connecting local leader networks representing more than 14,000 jurisdictions with financing opportunities.

This is what “local and global impact” looks like: stronger national climate plans that incorporate subnational needs and priorities, streamlined collaboration across levels of government to speed implementation, and more funding flowing to the projects that improve lives.

Multi-Partner Meeting

We warmly thank our strategic government partners — the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and France — for their continued engagement and support. At WRI’s 2025 Multi-Partner Meeting in Oslo, hosted by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), these partners came together to exchange insights, take stock of progress on the implementation of WRI’s Strategic Plan 2023–2027, and align on shared climate, environment, and development priorities. Even amid growing pressures on Official Development Assistance (ODA), their sustained commitment underscores the power of partnership and collective action in driving tangible development results, advancing sustainable growth, and creating a healthier, more resilient world for all.