Event at Habitat III discusses how to improve access to finance for cities

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 Climate Leadership Group (C40) 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 for Action on Municipal Infrastructure Finance.

• Through the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF), C40 and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, with additional support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), aim to unlock new investment in sustainable urban infrastructure, to develop city capacity and to share best practices. 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.
• The session also introduced the Financing Sustainable Cities Initiative, a partnership between C40, the Citi Foundation and the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, designed to help accelerate and scale up investment in sustainable urban solutions in cities around the world.
• Finally, recognising that fundamental changes are needed in how and what kind of finance flows to cities, C40 presented a Call for Action on Municipal Infrastructure Finance (see below), 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 financed.

Speakers:

• Hector Serrano, Secretary of Mobility, Mexico City
• Juan Pablo Bocarejo, Secretary of Mobility, Bogotá
• Tania Rödiger-Vorwerk, Deputy Director General for Environment and Infrastructure, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, (BMZ)
• Carrie Thompson, Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and Environment (E3), United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
• Horacio Terraza, Coordinator, Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB)
• Rodrigo Rosa, Special Advisor to C40 Chair Eduardo Paes, Mayor of Rio De Janeiro
• Mark Watts, Executive Director, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (Moderator)