PRINCIPLE 3: CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE

TCWNN IS RESILIENT, LOW CARBON AND ADAPTS TO CLIMATE CHANGE.

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1. TCWNN is net zero emissions by 2050 and limits global warming to 1.5°C by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 50 percent before 2030 from 2010 levels, en route to full carbon neutrality and a fossil fuel free global economy by mid-century. It reduces emissions from buildings, embraces retrofitting, and ensures that new urban construction becomes fossil fuel-free. It adopts affordable, robust low-carbon technologies and approaches, with efficient and locally relevant urban design strategies that minimize the carbon footprint of cities. It calls on cities to plan for and provide infrastructure and incentives for industries to prosper in a circular economy and to implement sustainable design, production, and consumption patterns.

2. TCWNN is resilient. TCWNN develops strategies for coping with current stresses and future shocks to its social, economic, and technical systems and infrastructures. It builds the capacities of local stakeholders, communities, and governing systems to assess risks, loss, and damage, and learn how to effectively adapt to and prepare for climate-related disasters. It acts to prevent such events where feasible and protect at-risk populations. It recognizes that it is only as resilient as its most vulnerable and marginalized populations and strives to ensure their long-term survival, sustainability, and quality of life.

3. TCWNN is regenerative. It restores and replenishes energy, water, food systems, land, air, and ecosystems. It is energy and resource-efficient, low-carbon, and increasingly reliant on renewable energy sources. It replenishes the resources it consumes and recycles and reuses waste. It manages water, land, and energy in a coordinated manner and in harmony with its regional areas. It supports ecosystem restoration and city-regional food systems, including urban and peri-urban food production and community-based agriculture. It is endowed with multifunctional, adaptable infrastructure that supports local biodiversity while providing public spaces that improves quality of life.

4. TCWNN thrives on nature and culture. It recognizes the capacities and limitations of the natural systems which support it, values biodiversity and ecosystem services for the roles they play in urban health, environmental protection, aesthetics, and liveability. It incorporates, supports, and empowers, cultural heritage, indigenous and traditional local knowledge, practices, and techniques, as well as community-based solutions, in climate change mitigation and adaptation planning and strategies.

5. TCWNN leaves no one behind. Because climate change is a poverty multiplier, it places the poor and marginalized groups at the heart of climate plans, strategies, and actions. It protects the most at-risk in preventing, preparing for, and responding to, dangerous events, providing sufficient resources for the most vulnerable members of a community before, during and after climate-related disasters. It empowers and provides vital tools for the most vulnerable communities and makes them more resilient. It addresses the needs of new migrants moving into communities as a result of climate-related disasters and distress.

6. TCWNN has new pathways for sustainable living, valuing preservation, and resource optimization. It harnesses effective solutions to ensure that non-renewable resource extractions are minimized, and renewable resources are fully utilized by improving waste management, generating clean and resource-efficient energy, decarbonizing the electric grid, and enabling next-generation sustainable mobility. It recognizes traditional mechanisms, enables knowledge and technology transfer, and encourages innovations in addressing climate change.​

7. TCWN adopts climate-resilient planning, sets targets and strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, engages in monitoring and continuous improvement practices to ensure those targets are attained on time or make strategy adjustments where necessary to correct course back towards target attainment, and promotes innovative urban design and sustainable mobility. It uses spatial planning and other decision support systems to encourage proactive and coordinated cross-cutting urban adaptation and mitigation. It lays emphasis on the preparation of actionable frameworks for better climate-resilient integrated urban development, including a massive expansion of pedestrian and active transportation networks, tree planting, community gardens, and green spaces.

8. TCWN has collaborative partnerships and mobilizes resources to manage and achieve climate actions and solutions. It places inclusive climate action at the center of all urban decision-making, to create thriving, sustainable, and equitable communities. It supports locally-led action as one of the most transformative strategies and recognizes the contributions of all stakeholders and their roles as agents of change.