Delivering Climate-Resilient Cities Using a Systems Approach

The report advocates for a 'systems approach' to urban infrastructure, moving away from siloed sectoral planning to integrate energy, transport, buildings, and nature-based solutions. It highlights that cities generate over 70% of global fossil-fuel GHG emissions and are critical to meeting Paris Agreement goals. Through case studies from cities like Melbourne, Fukuoka, and Singapore, the document demonstrates how integrated planning—such as combining land-use densification with transport and energy upgrades—maximizes co-benefits for public health and economic growth. It identifies key barriers, including legacy infrastructure, limited local regulatory power, and financing gaps, and proposes a five-step action plan involving leadership, multistakeholder engagement, integrative processes, implementation, and capacity building.

• Cities are central to the global climate battle because they account for more than 70% of global fossil-fuel greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while housing 55% of the global population.
• A systems approach to urban infrastructure treats multiple sectors—such as energy, buildings, and transport—as components of a larger working system, leveraging interdependencies to achieve better outcomes than optimizing sectors individually.
• Integrated nature-based solutions (NBS) provide co-benefits beyond climate resilience, including carbon sequestration, improved air quality, and biodiversity protection, with the total economic value of ecosystem services estimated between $125 trillion and $140 trillion per year.
• The recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity for cities to accelerate the adoption of systems approaches to ensure a green and just recovery, potentially creating over 50 million jobs by 2025.
• City governments face significant systemic challenges in implementing these approaches, including legacy infrastructure, lack of technical and political capacity, limited local regulatory power, and a lack of policy-relevant data.
• There is a massive financing gap for climate-smart urban infrastructure, estimated by the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance at $4.5 trillion to $5.4 trillion per annum.
• Effective implementation requires a five-step action plan: establishing leadership and vision, deepening stakeholder and community engagement, utilizing an integrative process (baseline and targets), executing implementation through partnerships, and building internal and external capacity.

APA

World Economic Forum (2022). Delivering Climate-Resilient Cities Using a Systems Approach. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_C4IR_GFC_on_Cities_Climate_Resilience_2022.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Delivering Climate-Resilient Cities Using a Systems Approach. 2022. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_C4IR_GFC_on_Cities_Climate_Resilience_2022.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Delivering Climate-Resilient Cities Using a Systems Approach |date=August 2022 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_C4IR_GFC_on_Cities_Climate_Resilience_2022.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2022delivering, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Delivering Climate-Resilient Cities Using a Systems Approach}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2022}, month = aug, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_C4IR_GFC_on_Cities_Climate_Resilience_2022.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }