Joint Work Programme
UN-Habitat, UNEP, the World Bank and Cities Alliance have joined forces in taking on the issue of cities and climate change. The joint work programme aims to contribute to a more coordinated and focused response to issues, which cities are facing, in particular in developing countries. Initiatives of the JWP include developing a global standard on greenhouse gas emissions originating from cities, editing a joint position paper on cities and climate change, the harmonization of approaches to urban risk assessments and the development of an online knowledge centre on cities and climate change.
UN-Habitat Partnership
Due to their complementary mandates in the fields of sustainable urban development and the global environment, UN-Habitat and UNEP have a long history of cooperation. Together, they have developed a joint work programme to mainstream environmental considerations into urban policymaking, to incorporate urban perspectives into environmental policymaking, and to highlight the linkages between local and global environmental issues.
Under this partnership, UNEP and UN-Habitat aim to provide improved and expanded services to local and national governments in the field of urban environment.
UNEP and UN-Habitat cooperate to enable cities to better assess and prioritize local environmental concerns and to have a voice in national and global environmental debates, in particular in such areas as climate change. Helping countries and cities to implement global standards, agreements and conventions enables them to better link local issues to global concerns. UNEP and UN-Habitat conduct joint activities on:
- Cities and climate change assessments
- Ecosystem-based adaptation in coastal cities
- Harnessing the mitigation potential of buildings, housing and construction
- Low carbon cities: the transport and urban planning dimension.
Gwanju City Cooperation
In the context of the Urban Environmental Accords, signed by more than a hundred cities to achieve sustainable development at city level, UNEP is cooperating with the City of Gwangju (South Korea). The initiative aims at developing and documenting approaches and tools for cities to promote green growth, resource-efficiency and the development of low carbon cities. Expected outputs include the development of a global framework to assess the environmental performance of cities and to explore the feasibility of developing a methodology for a Clean Development Mechanism at city-wide level.
