Assessing global cities' climate policy with self-reported pledges, plans & targets on net-zero transition

• Main Author: Ling, Chester Yuxuan
• Other Authors: Perrine Hamel
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Earth and Environmental Sciences; Social Sciences; Cities climate policy index; Urban environment and social inclusion index; Income cluster analysis
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174090
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With the accelerated global momentum towards a net zero economy, cities are increasingly serving as agents of decarbonisation and setting ambitious climate targets. The Cities Climate Policy Index proposed in this study introduces a composite index that measures and ranks cities’ performance globally in setting net zero targets, based on the Urban Environment and Social Inclusion Index and the Net Zero Tracker. The index identified cities and indicators across both platforms using matching algorithms and proposed criteria based on expert opinions and definitions. A total of 219 cities were assessed across 4 categories (Ambition, Core, Comprehensiveness and Transparency) and final scores were aggregated, ranked and analysed with World Bank Income classification and spatial mapping. The current snapshot of climate mitigation target-setting on a city level is worrisome considering a median of 0.371 (IQR=0.129,0.492) and a mean of 0.327 (SD=0.225) out of 1. Apart from 51 outlying cities scoring ‘0’, cities from nations with higher-income (HI) clusters generally perform better than cities from lower-income (LI) nations, which is consistent with findings from spatial distribution (n=168, median, HI: 0.440, UMI: 0.430, LMI: 0.384, LI: 0.185). The results from this study show that city-level climate target-setting is drastically insufficient and lacks concerted effort across the globe, particularly concentrated in cities from lower-income nations. Cities as sub-national actors should bridge the emissions gap and implement pledges with increased ambition, transparency and accountability to achieve the interim and end targets by 2030 and 2050 respectively.