Barbara Riedemann

With less than five years remaining to deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this year’s United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), convened under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council, marked a pivotal moment for assessing progress and defining what comes next.

The climate community has spent years building ambition. The next phase is about delivery. The challenge is building the conditions that allow climate action to scale. In a geopolitical landscape marked by growing uncertainty and pressure on multilateral systems, the Daring Cities 2026 Bonn Dialogues kicked off with a multilevel discussion focused on a fundamental question: What role should cities and regions play in the next chapter of climate governance?

COP30 has come and gone. NDCs 3.0 are on the table. The global community has made its commitments. The question now is whether and how those commitments will actually be delivered. According to the latest review of NDCs 3.0 by Un-Habitat, 80% of submitted national climate plans now contain well-developed urban content, up from 49% in the previous round. Cities are increasingly reflected across sectors such as energy, transport, housing, waste, and water.