Delivered on 18 November 2024 by Yunus Arikan, LGMA Focal Point
Mr.President,
My name is Yunus Arikan, Director of Global Advocacy at ICLEI and the LGMA Focal Point.
At the outset, I would like to wish you and all your negotiation teams the best of success in this critical moment of the COP29. Earlier this week the LGMA happily endorsed the Multisectoral Action Partnership (MAP) initiative as well as COP29 truce appeal.
We are aware, in this first week, the mitigation work program and the global finance goal were the most interrelated and complex issues. Therefore, our intervention now will focus on these two.
Our concrete proposal in that regard: We would like to remind all parties that we left Dubai with a huge sense of positive momentum. Paragraph 161 of the UAE consensus urges all parties toward multilevel action.
Immediately afterwards the subsidiary by the chairs has made it possible that the Mitigation Work Programme was able to focus on cities, buildings and urban systems. This was the first such a negotiation dialogue since 2018 Warsaw, And over this 10 years plus, we have seen a fantastic change in the approach of the UN climate negotiators to engage urbanization in the climate action.
In this regard, we would like to encourage Parties and the Presidency to ensure all possibilities to seize this opportunity for urbanization and multilevel action as a standalone process in the next couple of days. In that sense, our concrete call to parties as follows:
We invite UNFCCC Parties to support the outcomes of a dialogue in order to seize opportunities to enhance successful delivery of Paris Agreement through multilevel action and urbanization to be presented and agreed at COP30 that builds upon taking into account outcome of the dialogue in 2024, as well as the 20 November 3rd Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change on climate finance. We would like to see ambitious, quantified goals that are just equitable, well-funded and transition across all levels of government. This should ensure grants rather than loans and concessional terms that are prioritized so that the debt burden on local and other subnational governments is not exacerbated.
Thank you.
