The World Bank mandated Climate Focus with consortium partners The Carbon Disclosure Project, Trinomics and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), to explore ways in which to mobilize climate finance to support mitigation actions in cities. Under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, developed countries made a commitment to gradually scale up their climate finance to a level of USD 100 billion per year by 2020 with a balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation, and prioritizing funding for the most vulnerable and least developed countries. However, there is no agreement providing a pathway forward to achieve the long-term financial flows needed.

While negotiations will move on to define climate finance and its sources, this project looks beyond conventional mechanisms by defining basic fundamental design options for strengthening future international financing mechanisms and proposing a variety of ways to enhance the preparedness of cities to access these sources. Recognizing that the expected climate finance resources will fall short of what is needed to finance mitigation ambition in all cities, further options for co-financing and engaging the private sector were also presented.