Future Cities and New Economy, Carbon Neutrality Driven by Green Innovations

Local communities through innovation and actions may hold one of the keys to supporting efforts for zero emissions and overcoming some of the climate change challenges. A number of local communities have shown that by using local solutions it is possible to move the society towards carbon neutrality, combat climate change and create opportunities. There is a basis for supporting interventions that emanate from local communities and are geared towards reduction of carbon emissions. First, local communities can play vital roles as partners in ensuring national and local governments and businesses take their commitments to achieve carbon neutrality seriously. One important step is to ensure governments DRIVEN BY GREEN INNOVATIONSand businesses provide and implement plans for action in nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that define targets and actions to reduce emissions. Second, community-led initiatives provide local knowledge for strengthening required capacity, and a push to focus on the scale at which impacts are felt, and link the actions with outcomes. Community-led solutions embody an approach that addresses environmental, economic, and social issues simultaneously, recognizing the wholeness of people’s lives. Third, harnessing innovation and utilizing skills, knowledge and potential of local communities is critical in the transformation towards carbon neutral cities. Adapting to climate change requires innovation, creativity, experimentation and, above all, partnerships. Also, local communities ensure that solutions proposed and implemented towards carbon neutrality improve livelihoods. For example by ensuring that transformation towards carbon neutrality creates opportunities for jobs and growth. The pursuit of carbon neutral cities is not just a matter for national and city policymakers. Local communities play a critical role in this transformation. Local communities have not been left behind, but many are joining or leading efforts to tackle the critical challenges of climate change. Making available experiences of some of the local communities taking positive action is especially important – to inspire more local communities to join these efforts, trigger wide ranging changes in how companies and countries operate, help improve understanding of challenges and opportunities in tackling emissions. Despite the successes and promises, many community solutions remain unknown. The solutions in this article are some exceptional examples of grassroots level innovations that affect real change towards reduced carbon emissions. The challenge is how to sufficiently replicate and scale up community-led solutions to make significant change. The cases demonstrate and showcases the benefits of community led solutions towards carbon neutrality, encouraging further support, replication and scaling up. The cases provide new, practical and innovative practices, approaches and tools, and can be replicated and scaled up.

source :

https://unhabitat.org/future-cities-and-new-economy-carbon-neutrality-driven-by-green-innovations#:~:text=Future%20Cities%20and%20New%20Economy,%20Carbon%20Neutrality%20Driven%20by%20Green