Tag: China

C40’s recently launched Technical Assistance Programme will help member cities worldwide conduct detailed inventories of their greenhouse gas emissions, and subsequently set targets to limit future emissions and develop climate action plans.

At COP21 in December, C40 announced that the British philanthropy Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) will be funding the first phase of the programme. CIFF’s investment aims to catalyze consistent, transparent and robust measurement of urban emissions in cities across the world with the result of setting robust reduction targets using an international gold standard – the Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories (GPC). This will enable city-to-city comparison, knowledge sharing, more detailed climate action plans and support other global efforts like the Compact of Mayors.

By 2030, China is expected to have more than one billion urban dwellers, placing increasing pressures on the country’s cities and leaders to think innovatively in taking action against climate change. Fortunately, writes C40's Zach Tofias, Chinese cities are already stepping up, with the help of the C40 network. 

What makes a great city? The breadth and diversity of the C40 network might suggest that the unique circumstance of each city’s development makes it difficult to generalize. And yet years of urban planning experience have allowed experts to extract some basic principles on what a great city entails. Great cities have great parks. Great cities have fantastic public transit systems. Great cities are built for people, not cars. Great cities are sustainable.

In a week focused on advancing U.S.-China city climate action, C40 announced today that it has brought on global electric vehicle leader BYD as a funding partner for the third edition of the C40 Awards, which will take place this year on December 3 in Paris during the COP21 climate negotiations.