Meeting the Financing Needs of Cities: A Call for Action

Mayors are essential actors in delivering the New Urban Agenda’s vision of prosperous, equitable, and low-carbon/resilient cities. They are strongly committed to addressing climate change, poverty and inequality in their cities, yet, they are facing many challenges to deliver sustainable urban development, particularly acute financing challenges. Habitat III is an opportunity to overcome these difficulties. C40 Cities and its partners are working together to support this goal through the C40 Cities Finance Facility, the Financing Sustainable Cities Initiative and a new Call to Action. Through the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF), C40 Cities and partners BMZ, USAID, IADB and GIZ, aim to unlock $1bn of new investment in sustainable urban infrastructure, building city capacity and sharing successes. The session will address how the CFF is supporting cities in preparing sustainable infrastructure projects that can attract investment, and include an announcement on new funding for the CFF. It will also introduce “Financing Sustainable Cities”, an initiative of the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and C40 Cities, funded by Citi Foundation. FSCI focuses on helping cities develop business models that can accelerate the implementation of sustainable urban solutions. Recognizing that fundamental changes are needed in how and what kind of finance flows to cities, C40 Cities will finally present a Call for Action articulating the financing challenges and demands of cities that need to be addressed to support them in creating equitable, prosperous and resilient cities. By bringing together major actors including city leaders, development banks, private sector investors, aid agencies and NGOs, this engaging side-event will outline challenges, experiences, and solutions to articulate the city demand to each stakeholder, aiming to generate a positive change in the way sustainable urban development is funded and financed.