Learning how to align climate, environmental and development objectives in cities: lessons from the implementation of climate co-benefits initiatives in urban Asia

The growing cities in developing Asia require a massive provision of infrastructure, public transportation, housing and jobs for their population, as well as a healthy environment. On the other hand, urban Asia contributes increasingly to climate change, and suffers its impacts. The climate co-benefits approach in this paper refers to the development and implementation of policies and strategies that simultaneously contribute to addressing climate change and solving local environmental problems, which also have other development impacts. The co-benefits approach is important especially for developing countries, which have to overcome many challenges simultaneously with limited capacities and resources. Thus, the objective of this paper is to examine the main obstacles, opportunities and challenges to implementation of environmental co-benefit related policies in urban areas. The paper focuses primarily upon sub-national processes, particularly in cities in developing countries, but the research also looked into the links of sub-national processes to national and international processes. The paper relies on the results of research done in China, Indonesia and India. It offers a series of lessons for understanding initiatives that generated co-benefits and the factors that influence them. This paper provides insight on successful ways to promote, design and implement the urban co-benefits approach in urban areas.