Cities are demonstrating their ambition to address climate change by reducing emissions, adapting to climate impacts and establishing low carbon economies. In the run-up to the COP21 conference in Paris, cities were instrumental in paving the way for ratification of the historic agreement. Measurement and disclosure of climate data – which is our focus here at CDP – is a crucial step in charting progress towards meeting global climate goals.
Since Paris, cities have continued to lead on climate action, with more than 7,000 cities making commitments through the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, which brought together the Compact of Mayors and the EU Covenant of Mayors. These cities represent the largest and first-of-its-kind global coalition of cities committed to climate leadership.
Every year CDP and AECOM highlight cities which are excelling on climate disclosure, and showcase each city’s efforts with an InFocus Report. These reports are given to the city in each region that produced the highest quality response for its submission to CDP.
For the last six years, CDP has partnered with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, with more than 90% of C40 Cities disclosing their climate actions through CDP. Today we are awarding five C40 cities with InFocus Reports for demonstrating leadership climate change disclosure. These cities have received the highest scores in their regions for the quality and detail of their reported climate related-data. We congratulate:
Cape Town, South Africa
Mexico City, Mexico
Paris, France
Sydney, Australia
Vancouver, Canada
This year we also recognize cities that are disclosing for the first time in 2016 and received the highest score in each of their regions. Thanks to CDP’s cities program funder, Bloomberg Philanthropies, CDP has seen 533 cities disclose their climate change related data, with over 200 cities doing so for the first time. We congratulate this second group of cities which have excelled at climate disclosure in their first year of CDP reporting.
Gladsaxe Kommune, Denmark
Municipalidad de Providencia, Chile
North Vancouver, Canada
Taoyuan City, Taiwan
Yaoundé 6, Cameroon
Cities are setting ambitious targets, making their data publicly available and being transparent about their progress toward their climate goals. You can view CDP’s cities data on our Open Data Portal.
Looking ahead, 2018 will be a critical year for the implementation of the Paris agreement as governments will reconvene to take stock of progress and CDP will play a key role in tracking progress from cities, states, regions and companies.
Think your city can be a leader? CDP’s 2017 disclosure platform is now open and we encourage cities from across the globe to join the movement in climate disclosure.