By: Maryke van Staden, Director, ICLEI Local Government Climate Action Programme and Kyra Appleby, Global Director, Cities, States and Regions at CDP

Providing services to communities, protecting citizens, and building better places to live, work, and do business are the top priorities of local and regional governments worldwide. Climate action with transparency – through publicly available data and action reporting processes – is essential to achieving these goals. The easier this process is, the more time governments can spend on taking action, bringing benefits to their citizens and local economies. This is why we – CDP and ICLEI – are partnering to present a unified process for subnational climate action data reporting.

Listening to local and regional governments

Local and regional governments have been calling for a unified system to report their actions and, from April 2019, they will have just that. Reporting will be done once, via the CDP Platform, and the publicly disclosed data will be automatically shared with ICLEI.

We understand that the process of transparently reporting climate data requires valuable resources and that many governments are overburdened, with limited capacity and urgent responsibilities. For this reason, ICLEI and CDP have launched a collaboration to simplify the process and better support subnational governments to take faster and more ambitious action.

Local and regional governments cannot effectively manage what they do not measure.

The reporting process encourages them to better understand and think about the climate risks they face. Reporting their data helps them incorporate climate action planning into policy-making and expenditure, and encourages them to create comprehensive and integrated action plans.

The fulfillment of these plans, in turn, provides improvements in public health, creates jobs, combats fuel shortages and attracts investment to the area, as highlighted in Latest CDP analysis and in the ICLEI report Actions speak louder than words Data Speak Louder Than Words.

Optimisation for success

Since we announced our collaboration at COP23 in Bonn in 2017, our organisations have been focused on refining the details of the partnership. We are now ready to communicate about the launch of the new unified reporting system.

Our aim is to leverage the strengths of each organisation to simplify how local and regional governments report, and better empower them to track efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and integrate climate change resilience into their territories.

A unified platform

From April 2019, local and regional governments will only need to undertake the reporting process once on the CDP platform and share it with ICLEI, as mentioned previously.

Local and regional governments can give their permission to ICLEI and CDP to use their publicly disclosed data and will receive support from both organisations. We encourage you to report publicly, as this strengthens the data and contributes to transparency and good governance.

ICLEI will use this data to inform research and analysis activities and to represent local and regional governments on the global stage through its work of advocacy high-level politician. The CDP will use this data to produce instant analyses and reports for local and regional governments, allowing them to track their progress and benchmark themselves against their peers.

The reports will remain free of charge, and publicly disclosed data will be freely available online through the CDP's Open Data portal and on the website www.carbonn.org.

Both organisations will continue to support the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), the largest global coalition of cities committed to climate leadership. The unified system already integrates the GCoM's Common Reporting Framework, the new global framework for reporting city greenhouse gas inventories, climate risk and vulnerability assessments, and climate action plans. The new GCoM standards reflect the reporting that cities have already been undertaking and allow for the harmonisation and comparison of data from cities worldwide.

The CDP and ICLEI's unified reporting system will also continue to support the Under2 Coalition for subnational states and regions.

The global landscape

With more local and regional governments reporting side-by-side, we will have a clearer picture of the scope and impact of subnational climate action. Crucially, better data supports national governments in scaling up their ambition and strengthening their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by 2020.

The scale of the climate challenge was presented in detail at the Report IPCC Special Report on 1.5°CAnd no Summary for Urban Policymakers. To stand any chance of staying below the 1.5°C target, we must cut our global CO2 emissions to net zero within the next two decades. Both CDP and ICLEI are among a group of organisations to sign an open letter calling on city leaders to take action to cut emissions and build climate resilience.

The need for rapid and effective climate action represents nothing less than a complete transformation of global decision-making and the world economy. It will require unprecedented cooperative action, with local and regional governments playing a critical role in managing the transition. ICLEI and CDP are enthusiastic to be able to offer a unified reporting system to support this action.

News translated from the official CDP website and the site Talk of the Cities from ICLEI