Using climate change science to shape urban policy, and the future of our cities
Resilience First is part of a unique collaboration to co-create a Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP) that will present the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments in targeted summaries that can help inform action at the city scale. It will be published as a four-volume series over the course of the 2022 calendar year culminating in a report to be released at COP 27.
The IPCC is now in its 6th Assessment cycle (IPCC AR6) and is in the process of releasing a series of three reports from its Working Groups on Physical Science, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, and Mitigation, followed by a Synthesis Report, over 2021-2022.
The SUP will convene IPCC report authors acting in an independent capacity with local government officials, national governments and business communities through a partnership with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy's networks of cities, the Resilience First business network, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in collaboration with GIZ and led by the Resilience Shift.
The initiative was announced at the Glasgow COP26 climate conference, where several of the world’s leading climate change scientists came together with city and business leaders, global NGOs and national governments to explain how the SUP initiative will develop a companion series, distilling international climate change science for the urban context, and to be authored by a group of these same scientists in collaboration with cities and businesses in every region around the globe.
IPCC Authors Panmao Zhai, Debra Roberts, Jim Skea, Aromar Revi: “The Summary for Urban Policymakers initiative will provide cities and businesses with a clear and accessible view of the findings of the IPCC's main assessment reports. This collaboration between IPCC authors and practitioners from all regions of the world demonstrates how science and practice can in combination provide solid evidence to support climate action.”
City officials, national government representatives and business leaders will also have the opportunity to engage with the AR6 SUP authors, operating in an independent capacity, to explore additional opportunities for collaboration and co-creation – filling gaps in the available city-scale science and advancing solutions at scale across multiple geographies, using the SUP series as the evidence base for action.
Look out for the first volume in the series of Summary Reports to be published at the World Urban Forum 2022. It will summarise the first IPCC report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Change, written by the IPCC report authors and published in August 2021
Resilience First is uniquely engaging our business members as part of the Global Dialogues which will help to shape these critical supplementary reports. For more information about getting involved, please contact Beena Chester at bchester@resiliencefirst.co.uk
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