Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Mexico DF are the three central cities of the largest Latin America urban areas. They are an increasingly important source of greenhouse gases in each of their countries and at the same time they are very vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

During the last few years, the governments of Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo have taken steps and made commitments to address climate change issues. All three cities have passed climate change legislation and approved programs and strategies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change. Moreover, during the Rio +20 Summit, the mayors from the three cities signed a Joint Declaration (also known as the G3 Declaration) in which they stressed that local governments should take an active role in addressing climate change issues and they made a series of commitments to generate a common environmental agenda.

This project aimed to generate policy analysis and inputs to strengthen the climate change agenda and policies in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Mexico City and to contribute to the emerging process of cooperation on sustainability issues between these three main cities of Latin America. In this context, this project addressed two main issues:

First, climate change raises great governance challenges for these local governments. As mentioned above, all three cities have passed climate change legislation, programs and strategies; however the level of effective progress and implementation of these initiatives varies significantly. The project sought to explain these variations in the progress and implementation of different climate policy commitments and policies at the local level.

The second main issue addressed by this research proposal was how to finance climate change policies. Public policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts put additional pressure on the cities’ budgets and raise the need for additional resources. In fact, the Joint Declaration signed by the three mayors in the Rio + 20 Summit expressly addressees this issue by stating that the three local governments will explore the development of joint funding mechanisms, especially for the purchase, transfer and local development of clean technologies. In this context, this research project analysed what funding opportunities are open for these cities to finance climate policies and what are the potential mechanisms for developing a common strategy for climate funding between Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

This project was Stage 2 of the CDKN Innovation Fund, which aimed to identify mechanisms for strengthening resilience, highlighting opportunities where the private sector and civil society networks can help build the capacity of government agencies to respond to climate-related risks. The outcome of this project was increased collaboration and knowledge sharing among a network of partners in Latin America around urban resilience issues.

Stage 1 of this Innovation Fund project, Resilient Cities Action Lab: Creating partnerships for climate risk preparedness in Latin America (AAGL-0009B) took an action-research approach to provide a framework for engagement and dialogue with key stakeholders by analysing key institutional gaps, and best practice from other regions.

The project Stage 2 will produce a series of research outputs including research outputs covering the three cities. Moreover, two journal articles and two policy briefs will be produced, followed by seminars, workshops and a possible participation in the COP20 in Lima to disseminate the results.

Resources:

• Daniel Ryan (2012) Shaping local climate policies: a review of experience. FARN
• GUÍA: La política del cambio climático a nivel ciudad: Aprendizajes de Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo y Ciudad de México (In Spanish). Daniel Ryan y Alejandra Ramírez Cuesta
• GUIDE: The politics of climate change at the city level – Insights from a comparative study of Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Mexico City. Daniel Ryan y Alejandra Ramírez Cuesta
• Luis Zambrano*, Rodrigo Pacheco-Muñoz, Tania Fernández (2017). A spatial model for evaluating the vulnerability of water management in Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires considering climate change. Anthropocene 17 (1-12)

CDKN funding: 197,000

Lead partner: Fundación Ambiente Y Recursos Naturales (FARN) Contact:  Daniel Ryan

Project Partners:

• Brazilian research team led by Rachel Biderman
• Universidad Nacional Autónoma De México

Photo courtesy of Ãngel M. Felicísino