Skip to content
CityLab
Justice

Mayors Set a Tight Deadline to Initiate Climate Action

The next four years will decide if the world can deliver on the Paris agreement, and cities are tasked with an ambitious call to jumpstart the effort.
Mayors, including Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, ride their bicycles ahead other mayors as they arrive at the C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City.
Mayors, including Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, ride their bicycles ahead other mayors as they arrive at the C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City.Henry Romero/Reuters
By

Now that the fanfare of the Paris climate agreement has subsided, it’s time for the hard work to begin.

At this week’s annual C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City, a coalition of 90 cities at the forefront of the fight against climate change detailed everything cities have to accomplish in order to meet the agreement’s long-term goals. Their report, written with the engineering firm Arup, lays out an action plan to deliver on the promise of limiting the rise of global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius, and critical progress must be made by 2020.