The Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning reviews typical steps in the city-level climate action planning process in light of a proposed set of globally applicable principles. These principles, shown below, developed through a robust and open multi-stakeholder process, support local officials, planners and stakeholders in climate action planning. Such plans aim to help cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adopt low emission development trajectories, as well as adapt to the impacts of climate change and build local climate resilience.

These Guiding Principles are intended to be applied flexibly, together with more detailed ‘how to’ manuals, to help cities more effectively play their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building climate resilience.

Toolkit

The intention now (May 2016) is to apply these GP in selected cities, i.e., to assess how closely ongoing climate action planning processes in those cities adhere to the GP, and to offer suggestions as needed to strengthen those processes. At the same time we plan to capture feedback on the Version 1.0 of the GP, with the aim of refining those Principles in the future as need be. As with the GP initiative as a whole, such city-level exercises should serve a broader aim of facilitating knowledge and information sharing amongst engaged partners, so as to promote strengthened, expanded and more consistent climate action planning in cities around the world.