As the world grapples with the harsh reality of falling off the Paris Agreement track, the COP28 Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (CHAMP) for Climate Action, provides a ray of hope for getting back on track. The initiative commits endorsing countries to enhance cooperation with their local, regional and other subnational governments – including cities, towns, states and regions – to collectively pursue efforts to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

CHAMP was developed in consultation with subnational leaders and stakeholders, including America Is All In, Bloomberg Philanthropies, C40 Cities, CDP, European Climate Foundation, the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, ICLEI, NDC Partnership, UN Climate Change High-Level Champions, Under2 Coalition, UN-Habitat, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and others.

Through the advocacy work of the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency to the UNFCCC, with ICLEI serving as its focal point, CHAMP’s multilevel action spirit is reflected in paragraph 161 of the COP28 Global Stocktake decision that urges Parties to engage in inclusive, multilevel, cooperative action, as well as in other relevant paragraphs of the COP28 UAE Consensus.

• Consult

  The consultation of subnational governments to determine the areas for subnational action (adaptation, strategies, implementation, monitoring)

• Collaborate

  Working together with subnational governments to unlock and realize mitigation and adaptation action opportunities at the subnational level (review, design, enhancement, consolidation, and implementation)

• NDC 2025

  Creating inclusive institutional and informal processes to enable subnational governments to contribute to further enhancing NDCs ahead of COP30 in 2025 (integration of local and territorial baseline information, targets and action for emissions mitigation and adaptation across all sectors and industries)

• NDC Investment

  Including subnational government projects in climate-related investment priorities striving to help secure the resources necessary from public and private financial institutions (supporting project preparation, pipeline development, aggregation of projects, new financial instruments, or policy reform at local, national, regional and global levels)

• Voluntary Review

  Undertaking regular and inclusive country-led reviews of progress at national and subnational levels around the implementation of CHAMP commitments through existing processes, i.e. Voluntary National Review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to ensure that national policy frameworks support an accelerated ambitious multilevel climate action

• High Level Dialogue

  Meeting with representative subnational leaders at a global High-Level Political Dialogue on Multilevel Climate Action in the lead-up to both COP29 and COP30 to share good practices and lessons learned in implementing the CHAMP commitments as a contribution to the Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change