ISLAMABAD: The Asian Development Bank has agreed to provide technical assistance to Pakistan and three other regional countries in advancing climate-smart urban development.

The ADB assistance to Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Uzbekistan will be provided in climateinformed urban development planning, identifying climate change investments, and exploring innovative climate financing solutions for scaling up urban climate actions.

The technical assistance valuing $2 million will generate knowledge that is replicable to developing cities in Asia and the Pacific through undertaking an approach for city climate change action plans (CCCAP).

The CCCAP will be prepared based on a city-wide climate risk assessment and greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions profiling and include prioritisation of climate actions and financing opportunities.

In doing this, the technical assistance will fully harness the potential of geographic information systems (GIS) solutions to assess the localised climate impacts on urban residents and address the identified climate risks through appropriate climate actions.

The technical assistance will contribute to ADB`s role as the climate bank of Asia and the Pacific by demonstrating climate-smart urban development. As a continuation of the existing initiatives, the proposed assistance will leverage the relevanttechnicalandstrategieprogress made in recent years, within and outside of ADB, and contribute to operationalising the urban priorities set out by the Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) of ADB.

Under the assistance plan, it is intended to maximise the impact ofADB`s collaborative efforts between Climate Change, Resilience, and Environment Cluster (CCRE) and Water and Urban Development Sector Group (SG-WUD) within the context of the new operating model, to promote climate-smart urban development.

A report of ADB connected to the technical assistance says most cities in the four cities covered by the technical assistance are lagging in pursuing climate change actions, given their weak governance, limited financial resources, policy and regulatory restrictions, and inadequate expertise. Among others, one of the main challenges is the limited capacity of cities to identify and undertake measures to enable climateinvestment projects, including the mobilisation of financing for climate actions.

These cities continue to face significant headwinds in mobilising finance, and adaptation finance remains the most challenging issue,compared to mitigation finance, because of its fragmented nature and the difficulty of obtaining finance-related data. Another underlying cause hindering local climate investment and financing is the inadequacy of the existing climate change strategies and plans.

Climate change is not effectively integrated into local development plans, and in the budgetary and financial system. For mitigation, utilising established guidelines such as the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories is still challenging for cities. In terms of adaptation, most nationally determined contributions or national adaptation plans only outline national priorities without setting quantified targets.

Lack of city climate change action plans for localised climate actions.

A city-wide climate change action plan will be instrumental in identifying existing gaps and devising pri-ority actions in a holistic and integrated manner. Despite a growing imperative to empower cities for climate action, only a limited number of cities in the four countries covered by the technical assistance have proper climate change plans developed based on the GHG emissions profile and a city-wide climate risk assessment.

The existing climate change action plans are not necessarily linked to climate finance, which is crucial to attract additional climate investment or establish funding mechanisms for climate investment. Additionally, women are particularly vulnerable to climate change in urban settings. Inclusive and gender-mainstreamed climate action planning is imperative.

The proposed technical assistance will aim to support the four countries and relevant cities to improve their ability to address technical and financial gaps related to climate planning and implemen-tation. The technical assistance will assist the selected cities with citywide climate risk assessment using the latest climate data under the coupled model inter-comparison project phase six (CMIP6), along with spatial information data, and measure their emissions of GHG, as basis for the CCCAP.

A comprehensive CCCAP will include the climate targets, a portfolio of prioritised climate actions, enabling policy and institutional reforms including recommendations for financial sustainability of climate actions.

The proposed pipeline of climate investment projects is intended to be implemented by the respective countries and or in collaboration with development partners including ADB. The assistance will particularly help governments in preparing the project concepts or proposals based on city climate action plans and prefeasibility assessment results.