We need your vote to help us advocate for the role of cities at Cop30

SmartCitiesWorld is inviting its global audience to play a part in the next stage of development in its Cop30 communiqué, advocating for the role of cities at this year’s climate change conference in Belém, Brazil.

Cities’ are acknowledged as being on the frontline of the climate crisis but they are not yet formally embedded in the core decision-making structure of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

A number of organisations around the world have been undertaking great work to ensure the role of cities is more formally acknowledged and designed into future agendas for Cop meetings. The Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency – the official UNFCCC observer group for cities and regions, is recognised as the voice of cities, towns and regions in the UN climate process. Meanwhile, the first-ever Local Climate Action Summit, co-hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Cop28 Presidency in Dubai – and which included the launch of the Coalition for High Ambition Multi-Level Partnerships or Champ – marked a turning point but there is still work to be done.

Throughout this year, SmartCitiesWorld Editorial Advisory Board chair, Paul Wilson, has led a working group to identify cities’ top climate resilience policies. From this, we have put together a set of 18 priorities across six policy areas and we are now taking these to our virtual and in-person Cities Climate Action Summit 2025, which kicks off today online, for interactive voting. 

How you can be involved

We are inviting SmartCitiesWorld’s global audience to choose one priority from each of the six polls below. The polls will close at 5:15pm BST on 25 June at the close of SmartCitiesWorld’s in-person Cities Climate Action Summit in London and we will publish the results the day after.

These priorities will form the basis for the communiqué, which will be posted online across the summer to gain endorsements ahead of Cop30 in November. Look out for further news updates in the coming months.

Thank-you for taking part and helping us to continue our mission to help cities tackle climate change.