The Climate City Contract as an integrated urban governance tool for climate neutrality and nature positivity
The Climate City Contract (CCC) is a governance innovation tool developed in the context of the Climate-neutral Cities Mission to help cities collaboratively address their barriers to reaching climate neutrality by 2030.
Nature-based solutions are recognised by Mission Cities for their role in supporting mitigation, sequestration and adaptation – and are therefore integrated in the commitments, actions and investment plans for the transition towards climate neutrality and nature positivity.
The CCC is the documented result of an iterative co-creation process. Systemic in nature, this process is led by cities and involves multiple stakeholders at various governance levels, as well as the wider ecosystem of private and civic stakeholders. Together, they identify all the key actions to achieve 2030 climate neutrality, and the ways and means to implement them.
‘Nature includes climate and natural resources, thus the target of nature-positivity helps to meet the climate targets. Our climate work has confluences and common targets with the regional programme “Nature Step to Health” and the new project “Lahti Living Lab – Nature Positive Life” which both see climate work as a lever to promote human health and biodiversity.’
How the CCC Paves the Way for Integrated Transition Planning and Implementation
The holistic approach ties the climate work to other strategic goals of the city, such as economic vitality, nature positivity and climate adaptation. Following the guidelines and actions to reach their climate-neutrality goal will also bring Lahti multiple co-benefits, such as well-being and health of citizens. Reducing emissions in traffic will, for instance, lead to enhanced air quality. Similarly, changes in food systems or increased biking and walking can have positive impacts on both health and climate.
The city of Lahti is involved in research and development projects regarding planetary lifestyle, which in turn can both have a positive impact on nature, citizens plus reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The city and the strategic partners have identified several co-benefits of climate work that can support the economic vitality of the region such as new possibilities for multistakeholder collaboration, new investments, financing opportunities, support for RDI-sector, new innovations and business opportunities leading to economic sustainability, improved economic competitiveness and employment. This all builds a common trust that Lahti region will succeed and flourish also in the future.
How the CCC paves the way for integrated transition planning and implementation based on the Climate Transition Map
1. Building a strong mandate.
Lahti’s Transition Team works on two levels - a steering group along with a working group of experts. The experts in the working group come from the key city departments of the city of Lahti, and involve people working on environmental policy, urban planning, housing and environment, transport and infrastructure planning. Other experts are invited to join the working group meetings based on the discussed topics. The steering group has members from the management level of the city of Lahti. In addition the largest city-owned companies are represented. They work closely with research institutes, technology sector, and welfare services in terms of low-carbon innovations and enhancing planetary lifestyle in Lahti, and thus have representatives from the universities, Wellbeing services of county Päijät-Häme and Technology Industries of Finland in the steering group.
2. Understand the system
Lahti utilized scenario work to understand how the global and national trends will affect the local emissions in coming years and assessed the emission reduction potential of the already set and secured actions. They also estimated the emission reduction potential of suggested actions. Cost estimates were provided for most significant suggested actions. Based on the information available, the emissions gap was calculated.
3. Co-design a portfolio
The Action Portfolio was based on the knowledge of internal experts, stakeholders, academics and pilot projects. The process began with thematic workshops where system information was discussed and ideas for actions collected from experts from city departments and daughter companies. A second round of meetings was organized with departments, teams and stakeholders, as they were able to design actions that they could take responsibility for. Another round of thematic workshops was organized with a larger representation from external experts and stakeholders to finalise the impact pathways and list of actions. Two stakeholder workshops were organized for companies and organisations that could have larger impact emissions in the area. The participants provided feedback for the structure and content of the Commitments and many agreed to sign the contract as a partner of the city.
4. Take action
All actions will be taken into the online platform Lahti Environmental Watch (Lahden ympäristövahti). The persons responsible for actions will get notifications from the platform for regular updates on the progress of the actions. Closing the emissions gap will require actions, effort, and investments from all the partners involved in the CCC. Collaboration between the city of Lahti and its stakeholders covers various aspects from ensuring sufficient labour force and knowledge, sufficient infrastructure, research collaboration. Holistic work of the whole ecosystem built around the actors involved in the Cities Mission is required for reaching the climate neutrality target. At the same time the holistic approach brings new opportunities for stakeholders and makes Lahti even more attractive for new investments and companies.
5. Learn and reflect
The city of Lahti updates its Climate Program annually, and repeats the inventories for production-based and use-based emissions annually. They continuously monitor the realisation of actions listed in their climate programme and action portfolio via the online Lahti Environmental Watch (Lahden ympäristövahti) system. Next steps are to develop indicators for the actions, so that their effects can be followed in an easier and more consistent manner.
6. Make it the new normal
Communication plays a strong role in making it a new normal and is one channel of collaboration between the parties of the Climate City Contract.
Example from Lahti's Action Plan
Securing ecosystem services for the city of Lahti in owned forests, open areas and built-up areas in green areas.
#The proportion of protected areas in the total area of the area is increased so that it rises to 5%. Together with LUMO sites, the protected area will be increased to 8% by 2030
#The microclimate effect of built-up green areas (street trees, parks) is improved
# Forests and other green areas become more diverse in age
# Diversity of tree species in parks and forests
# Ground water protection
The most valuable natural environments are protected from construction. Restoration efforts and care of protected areas is intensified and special attention is paid to the habitats of the most endangered organisms. Follow-up annually in the Environmental Review with protection indicators. In the long term, forests are grown in such a way that they vary in the ratio of tree species and age structure and enable versatile recreation. At the same time, they withstand deforestation and changes in weather conditions better than forests where only one tree species of the same age grows. The beneficial effects of urban vegetation that balances temperature and winds, binds air pollutants and reduces the generation of harmful stormwater, is increased. The groundwater model of the city of Lahti will be updated in terms of material. The information of that material is exported to the city's spatial information system for use by various units. Impact and cost is being assessed.