GreenDEMO at COP30: Why Democratic Green Transitions in Cities Matter for Global Climate Politics
In this blog post, Anna Kurth, Research Fellow at UCL IIPP, reflects on three themes from COP30 that matter for cities and for GreenDEMO.
This year’s UNFCCC conference, framed by the Brazilian COP30 Presidency as the “COP of implementation", shifted attention from what countries promise to how they will deliver on their climate targets. While national governments negotiate at COP30, implementation unfolds at the subnational level: it is in cities and regions where most mitigation and adaptation measures take shape. These actors engage in the UNFCCC process through the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency, which advocates for recognition of cities as equal partners in designing and delivering climate policy.
GreenDEMO, a three-year initiative connecting cities across Europe, supports this imperative by helping them develop, scale, and sustain innovations for greener and more democratic governance. Three themes emerging from COP30 underscore why GreenDEMO’s work is so timely: cities as facilitators of a just transition, cities as implementers of climate policy, and cities as builders of long-term capabilities.
1. Cities as facilitators of a just transition
One of the major outcomes of this COP was the launch of a new just transition mechanism under the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP). It has been widely celebrated as one of the strongest rights-based achievements in UN climate negotiations to date (UNFCCC, 2025 Climate Action Network, 2025). Although the final decision text does not explicitly highlight the role of cities and subnational governments, their importance to a just transition is clear. Cities are central social and economic hubs with direct links to workers, unions, and vulnerable groups. They convene participatory processes, shape place-based transition pathways, and help ensure that climate action is socially legitimate. Ignoring these local contexts risks deepening inequalities and generating political backlash (LGMA, 2025).
This is a key area in which GreenDEMO can contribute. By focusing on democratic legitimacy, GreenDEMO supports the implementation of the global just transition agenda at the level where transitions materialize. The legitimacy of transition policies hinges on core democratic process qualities (such as accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and influence) that must accompany any public-sector innovation. Ensuring the democratic legitimacy of green transition policies across all levels of government is essential for their success, and GreenDEMO works to equip local governments with the capabilities needed to build and sustain that legitimacy.
2. Cities as implementors of green transitions
Although COP30 introduced an important new just transition mechanism, crucial outcomes to implement findings from the Global Stocktake — including a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels — we are lacking. This makes the role of cities even more crucial in closing the implementation gap. Cities manage the sectors (transport, buildings, land use, waste, and energy efficiency) where this transition materializes: They could close up to 40% of the global emissions gap, and subnational governments hold mandates for around 70% of climate solutions (ICPH, 2025). There is growing momentum behind multilevel climate action: 64% of analysed NDCs now reference multilevel governance and - for the first time - the Local Leaders Forum and the World Mayors Summit were convened in partnership with the COP Presidency (Global Covenant of Mayors, 2025).
Bridging this implementation gap requires the ability to roll out successful pilots at scale. Public sector innovations, however, often encounter severe barriers when it comes to their implementation, upscaling and institutionalisation (Cinar, Trott and Simms 2019). This is another focus addressed by GreenDEMO: how public administrations develop the transformative capacities needed to move from one-off pilots to institutionalisation (Borrás et al, 2023). Without relevant capacities city-level innovations for a green transition risk remaining episodic, fragmented, or vulnerable to political churn.
3. Implementation Requires Capacity and Capability
COP30 reaffirmed that implementation depends on both capability and finance. Subnational actors currently receive less than 10% of climate finance directly, despite being responsible for key infrastructure and fewer than 5% of major cities in the Global South can access international capital markets (ICPH, 2025). Without reform, the places where implementation happens will remain under-resourced. Finance without capacity-building risks bypassing the communities and governments with the greatest implementation gaps (LGMA, 2025).
In this regard, GreenDEMO examines how city administrations develop the transformative capacities required to deliver climate action in practice, including the roles, resources and abilities required (Borrás et al, 2023). We also consider how different administrative traditions shape the ability of local governments to govern complex transitions, and what specific capabilities are needed in each context to enable effective democratic green transitions. In short, the global implementation agenda discussed at COP30 relies on exactly the kinds of capabilities that GreenDEMO seeks to understand and strengthen.
Conclusion
The core themes of COP30 - implementation, just transition, and capacity - point directly to cities. Strengthening the capabilities of local governments to deliver democratic green transitions is therefore a prerequisite for achieving global climate goals. This challenge lies at the heart of GreenDEMO’s mission: to understand and support how cities develop, scale, and institutionalise new democratic and green governance practices.
The final COP30 agreement does not accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels at the pace required. And while it recognises the potential of cities and subnational governments, it does not sufficiently empower them to collaborate on national climate strategies. Still, the COP30 outcome explicitly stresses “the important role and active engagement of (…) cities and subnational authorities (…) in contributing to collective progress (…) and in enhancing ambition and implementation” (UNFCCC, 2025). GreenDEMO will contribute to this momentum by exploring how cities can strengthen the capabilities needed to deliver effective and democratically legitimate climate action.
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