Co-benefits of urban climate action: a framework for cities

Why do climate co-benefits matter for cities? • The evidence suggests that citizens are more likely to take action on climate change, or more likely to support governments that take action on climate change, if the wider co-benefits of those actions are emphasised. • At the same time, policies that are aimed at supporting innovation, delivering economic benefits and enhancing the quality of life of citizens can potentially lead to major climate cobenefits (e.g. reduced greenhouse gas emissions) which would be more challenging to achieve if climate action were the primary objective. • At the city level, the potential of co-benefits is particularly great as citizens can often witness the results of policy actions more directly on their daily lives. Definition and taxonomy of co-benefits • The term co-benefits has a wide range of definitions in the climate literature, with over 20 terms identified in the literature that are used synonymously or in a similar context. • The term co-benefits varies in intentionality (e.g. is climate the primary or secondary objective, or simply an unintentional benefit?), scope (e.g. does it include mitigation benefits, adaptation benefits or both?), and scale (e.g. are the benefits short term and local, or long term and global?). • Co-benefits may be (1) secondary benefits from climate policy action, (2) secondary climate benefits from other policy actions, or (3) the combination of climate and non-climate benefits; both of which are targeted under an integrated policy programme. • The wide range of established definitions of co-benefits used by authoritative organisations means that formulating a taxonomy of co-benefits with broad buy-in from policy makers is challenging. Results of literature review • Health, Land Use and Transport were the top three sectors for the number of co-benefits, with over 40 co-benefits identified in each. • Waste, Air Quality, Transport and Energy had particularly high numbers of mitigation cobenefits in the literature reviewed. Adaptation co-benefits were particularly strong for Disaster and Emergency, Food Security and Tourism, Culture and Sport. Land Use, Health, Water and Education tended to be strong for both mitigation and adaptation co-benefits.