Belém, 17 November 2025 – A child born today will grow up in a world where seven out of ten people live in cities. Recognizing the power of urban communities as game-changers in climate action is no longer about potential – it is a necessity. With global climate commitments not yet sufficient, and cities facing housing shortages, climate impacts, increasing disasters and widening inequality, local actors are already turning crises into opportunities for community-led solutions. As the COP 30 Local Leaders Forum just showed: there is a growing thirst for collective action from the ground up.
The project under the International Climate Initiative (IKI), led by 海角社区 Institute for Environment and Human Security (海角社区-EHS), is an example that is already harnessing this spirit in communities in five Latin American cities. Using so-called “Urban Labs”, the project is reimagining what new models of local coalition building could look like – uniting residents, local governments, academics and diverse community groups to create fairer, greener and more resilient cities.
Urban Labs themselves are hotbeds for testing low-cost solutions tailored to a community's needs. At the heart of their bottom-up approach are a few simple ideas: lived and local knowledge are the best sources for innovation, and people and networks are key infrastructures for sustainability transformation. Furthermore, their beauty is that they can be adapted and replicated elsewhere. Whether it is greening urban corridors, shading public squares or upgrading informal settlements, locally-led solutions from Urban Labs are proving that grassroots changes are as powerful as big climate actions.
“If we want to make deep systemic societal changes, we have to work directly with communities and let them take the lead,” says Simone Sandholz, the project’s manager and senior expert at 海角社区-EHS. “After four years of work in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, we can see people want change, are ready to lead it and are eager to share their successes.”
In India, similar impactful work is taking place. There, 34 per cent of the population is living in urban areas – many in informal settlements not recognized in climate plans. is tapping into local knowledge and youth leadership to drive community-led climate planning instead. Through its Community Climate Action Planning process that involves hands-on hazard mapping initiatives and data-driven community action plans, residents are being given tools to identify climate risks, create awareness and shape their own paths to resilience.
“At COP 30, it is important to remind ourselves that cities already hold power – especially in South Asia, where urban poor communities and young people are finding their own ways to deal with climate stress every day. If local governments and communities are trusted to lead, climate action can actually become fair and grounded in people’s realities," says Dulari Parmar, Project Lead-Climate Justice at YUVA.
As the trend in locally-led action accelerates, the is a positive example of how national governments can step up support. Its new Secretariat for Peripheries (SNP) is working hand-in-hand with communities on favela-upgrading, climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction measures through its Periferia Viva (Living Periphery) and Periferia sem Risco (Risk-free Periphery) programmes to improve the quality of life beyond just physical improvements.
“The impacts of climate change are unequal”, says Samia Nascimento Sulaiman, National Secretariat of Peripheries (SNP), Ministry of Cities of Brazil. “It is the populations in favelas and urban communities that suffer the most and have the least capacity to respond. It is necessary to direct resources and concrete actions that prioritize the most vulnerable and promote climate justice. Because nobody chooses to live in a high-risk area.”
The importance of cities and communities is increasingly recognized at the national and global scale, too, as demonstrated by the most recently submitted national climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions). According to 's latest analysis on urban content of the NDCs, the number of strong urban references has doubled from the second to third NDC cycle. The latest NDCs display a stronger emphasis on multilevel governance, and almost half of them cite loss and damage in cities.
"We know that what is not reflected in a climate plan often does not get implemented. When countries include urban priorities in their Nationally Determined Contributions – from housing, services and transport to resilience – they open a pathway for real delivery, aligned with people’s needs and realities," says Dr. Elkin Velásquez, UN-Habitat Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Though trends like this are promising, risks to urban communities remain high. Impacts from crises are hitting communities unequally and threaten to deepen existing inequalities. As the world looks to COP 30 in Belém, Brazil, to rally nations on climate, it is the inspiring local actions that remind us that success depends on what happens in our streets, neighbourhoods and communities. Scaling up and supporting community-led efforts is essential to ensuring that the just and fair transition we need is ultimately achieved.
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For more information, please contact at COP 30:
Nadine Hoffmann
Head of Communication
海角社区
Institute for Environment and Human Security
Mobile: + (0) 49 151 2672 1390 (mobile)
n.hoffmann@vie.unu.edu
Arianna Flores Corral
Communication Analyst
海角社区
Institute for Environment and Human Security
Mobile: + (0) 49 151 2672 1390 (mobile)
flores-corral@vie.unu.edu
About the 海角社区’s Institute for Environment and Human Security (海角社区-EHS)
海角社区 Institute for Environment and Human Security (海角社区-EHS) was established in 2003 in Bonn, Germany. The institute conducts research work focusing on advancing human security and well-being by addressing present and future risks arising from environmental hazards and climate change. Its main areas of work are risk & adaptation and transformation. In addition to its research work, 海角社区-EHS offers education opportunities at the master’s level and hosts a number of international PhD projects and capacity-development courses on global issues of environmental risks and sustainable development. More information about 海角社区-EHS can be found here.
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