With the Paris climate agreement in full force, countries around the world must now get down to the serious business of addressing climate change. The Paris climate accord holds national governments responsible for developing climate action plans and creating a transparent system to monitor how well each country is performing. And cities – responsible for two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and 70 percent of energy consumption – are on the front lines.

 At COP 22, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the World Bank highlighted some of their newest tools to help cities meet climate challenges.

Unless there is significant investment to make cities more resilient, natural disasters may cost cities worldwide $314 billion a year and climate change may push up to 77 million more urban residents into poverty. In a new report, Investing in Urban Resilience, the World Bank and GFDRR note that more than 60 percent of areas expected to be urban by 2030 have yet to be built. The report points to a number of major hurdles facing municipal governments and recommends steps to increase investment in resilience, such as implementing and enforcing modern building codes and creating a pipeline of investor-ready projects. It also lays out action the World Bank is taking to help cities promote urban resilience investment:

• Pre-development grant financing and technical assistance for project preparation;
• Advisory services to conceptualize, structure and finance investor-ready projects;
• Analysis to include hazard and risk considerations in project design and delivery; and,
• Technical Assistance to improve cities’ investment climate, regulatory environment, and city creditworthiness.

Cities depend on a complex network of infrastructure, institutions and information; systems which need to work together to improve resilience to natural and socio-economic shocks and stresses which are exacerbated by climate change. With this in mind, the CityStrength Diagnostic tool evaluates the resilience of a city holistically, identifying the main risks across priority sectors such as urban development, infrastructure, disaster risk management, and social protection. Developed by the World Bank and GFDRR, the CityStrength Diagnostic helps cities:

• Identify and prioritize investment and actions for increased resilience
• Engage with multiple stakeholders, including local and national government officials, civil society and the private sector, leading to awareness raising and increased coordination on urban resilience.
• Encourage learning and provide access to best practices

The tool has been implemented in Can Tho, Vietnam; in Addis Ababa and ten regional capitals in Ethiopia; and across 16 municipalities in the Greater Accra Area in Ghana. As a result, a World Bank project is implementing the recommendations in Can Tho, the government of Addis is incorporating resilience-building components in an urban transport project, and a new urban resilience project is under preparation in Accra; helping these cities reach the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.

“We saw city leaders take center stage at both COP21 and COP22,” said Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, senior director for the World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice. “In Marrakech, the focus was on how to implement the Paris agreement, and bring national and local governments together to tackle what is likely the most enormous challenge in our lifetime.”