Abstract
•Inconsistent framings and applications of co-benefits undermine comparability and create uncertainty over what should be prioritized.•A lack of shared definitions and methods limits the ability of cities to build integrated socio-economic cases for climate action.•Most co-benefits included in city strategies and reported on remain at the identified or consideration level and are not consistently defined and measured.•Persistent governance fragmentation and finance gaps risk narrowing climate action planning to what is most readily measurable, rather than what delivers the greatest systemic value.•While cities demonstrate innovation and recognize the critical role of co-benefits, weak institutional and methodological alignment and resource constraints prevent fully realizing their promise.
Recent efforts to mainstream climate action in urban governance have focused on a co-benefits approach. Cities advocate low carbon place-based investments on the basis that they can deliver wider social and economic benefits, such as access to green spaces, cheaper energy, job creation, and cleaner air or water. In parallel, recently devised climate action planning tools share these features: integrating climate-related actions (master planning); outlining the co-benefits of actions across key high emitting sectors such as energy and transport (i.e., impact pathways); seeking to generate new forms of governance, actor mobilization, and finance; and, creating a local enabling environment by convening key stakeholders and citizens.
Despite these developments, the monitoring and reporting systems and data platforms used by cities (e.g., CDP-ICLEI Track, Kausal, ClimateView, and MyCovenant) are primarily focused on measuring emissions reductions. Tracking co-benefits and reporting on them remain marginal activities. This, combined with a lack of a unified approach to co-benefits, methodological challenges, and city-level capacities and capabilities, has resulted in a diversity of co-benefit approaches, with cities picking which ones they can/want to measure. In this paper, we compare the designs of the C40 and NetZeroCities impact frameworks and critically reflect on their complexity, limitations, and implications for local policymaking in the context of the urban climate governance system. We conclude by highlighting the need for a more integrated view of co-benefits functions, ensuring a more “collective intelligence”-based approach marked by participatory feedback loops and decision-making processes rather than a narrow focus on the most readily quantifiable factors.