UCCRN Climate Change and Cities Expert Meeting

Scaling Up and Speeding Up: New Recommendations for Climate Action in Cities

The Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) hosted a Rio G20 side event at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on March 27, 2024. Sponsored by the Columbia Global Center | Rio de Janeiro, UCCRN Education, and UCCRN’s Latin American Hub, the Expert Meeting brought together international urban experts – as part of UCCRN’s Year of Climate Action – to engage in the global discourse on climate change and cities. The meeting stimulated breakthrough thinking, ignited opportunities for collaboration, and generated actionable strategies ahead of the upcoming G20 Summit, IPCC AR7’s Special Report on Cities, and Innovate4Cities.

Participants in the UCCRN Climate Change and Cities Expert Meeting in Rio de Janeiro produced a statement on Scaling Up and Speeding Up: New Recommendations for Climate Action in Cities, which is also being translated into Portuguese and Spanish. The statement includes five recommendations related to generating knowledge for urban climate action.

Building on the ARC3.3 process and the UCCRN Expert Meeting held last week, recommendations for urgently needed climate action in cities are:

1. Create a shift in mindset for climate change action in cities.
2. Foster innovative ways to connect multiple urban scales and systems from neighborhood to metropolitan regions.
3. Align and coordinate city actors, investments, and regulatory policies.
4. Co-create indicators, metrics, monitoring tools, and environmental sensing technologies for city-specific, multi-scalar, and multi-temporal learning on how to achieve resilient net-zero cities.
5. Deliver neighborhood climate action by testing innovative concepts bridging community priorities and climate science.

The five urban climate action recommendations from the UCCRN Climate Change and Cities Expert Meeting in Rio de Janeiro are signposts showing crucial pathways to effective entry-points for climate mitigation and adaptation interventions. Following these recommendations will empower planners, implementers, and many other city actors as they undertake climate action in their own urban communities.

UCCRN's Expert Meeting was a side event of the upcoming G20 Summit and brought together diverse urban experts both in person and online. Participants included UCCRN Hub Directors, ARC3.3 Authors, scientists from a broad range of disciplines, urban planners, city practitioners, community groups, and members of the urban research community from Latin America and beyond. The Expert Meeting fostered deep and innovative collaboration involving critical stakeholders from the Global South as well as balanced gender, ethnicity, and expertise.

News Related to the Expert Meeting

Brites, R. (2024). "As recomendações de pesquisadora da Nasa para mudanças climáticas no Rio". Veja.

Santos, A. (2024). "Reunião de Especialistas em Mudanças Climáticas e Cidades da UCCRN acontece no Rio de Janeiro como evento do G20". COPPE.