How OGP Local Members are Solving Climate Action Challenges through Collaboration

Cities and communities around the world face mounting pressure to accelerate climate action. But translating climate ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po... into results depends on more than just technical capacity. It also requires institutions that can work together, build shared legitimacy, and respond to how climate impacts are felt locally.

Across the open government community, OGP Local members are charting a promising path forward. Through collaboration, shared planning, and community-centered approaches, they are overcoming the governance barriers that have long held back implementation and making climate action more feasible, inclusive, and durable.

What’s Getting in the Way of Progress?

The Inter-American Development Bank’s guidance for municipal and regional climate action shows that progress often stalls because local governance systems were never built for the complexity of climate challenges. Effective climate action demands alignment across government and non-government actors, mechanisms that produce legitimate, shared priorities, cooperation from influential sectors, and institutional capacity to integrate local vulnerability into planning.

Many governance structures lack the enabling conditions to engage relevant actors. The result is a persistent gap between climate ambition and implementation. Yet this is a gap that collaborative approaches are beginning to close— and cities and subnational governments are particularly well positioned to lead. Operating closest to communities experiencing climate impacts and holding responsibility over key implementation areas such as land use, transport, waste, and service delivery, they can more readily convene stakeholders and build the shared legitimacy that climate action requires.

OGP Local Members are Overcoming Challenges to Climate Action

Below are four concrete examples showing how OGP Local members are addressing major climate action barriers through collaboration with citizens, civil society, and the private sector. Each initiative is supported through People Powered’s Climate Democracy Accelerator.

Strengthening Cross-Sector Coordination

Climate responsibilities are spread across multiple institutions, levels of government, and private actors, making coordination difficult and slowing down climate implementation.

To address this fragmentation and improve coordination, municipalities can create multi-actor governance mechanisms that bring together all relevant institutions and sectors around a shared agenda. Through structured dialogue, participatory planning, and co-creation, these mechanisms help establish common priorities, align mandates, and build legitimacy for coordinated climate action. When actors help design the rules and goals together, coordination becomes practical and sustained.

See how Quintana Roo, México brought actors together to co-create a shared environmental governance policy.

Engaging the Public to Identify Priority Climate Investments

Many municipalities struggle not only with scarce environmental budgets but with the absence of clear, legitimate methods to prioritize which climate-relevant interventions should receive funding first.

To mitigate this challenge, cities can use collaborative priority-setting processes to build a clear, publicly supported environmental mandate. Instead of relying solely on technical models, engaging residents and municipal actors to generate ideas, refine proposals, and select shared priorities helps build legitimacy around investment decisions. This collective backing guides where scarce climate resources should go and enables municipalities to act with greater confidence and political support.

See how Corrientes, Argentina used collaboration to decide what environmental actions to take first.

Proactively Addressing Concerns from Key Stakeholders

Major climate transitions, such as changes in mobility, energyEnsuring universal access to sustainable, dependable, and affordable energy is critical to every aspect of prosperity. Increasing public oversight and transparency in the energy sector can help to ens... More use, or land management, can threaten livelihoods, habits, and special interests. This can generate opposition from powerful groups and make reforms politically risky.

To proactively manage stakeholder concerns, cities can establish trust-building processes such as structured dialogue, public consultations, and the inclusionOGP participating governments are working to create governments that truly serve all people. Commitments in this area may address persons with disabilities, women and girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, tr... More of underrepresented groups. These approaches help surface concerns early, enable negotiation around trade-offs, and reduce conflict. When stakeholders participate in shaping transitions, resistance decreases and pilot projects become socially and politically feasible.

See how Nairobi, Kenya used structured dialogue and public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio... to reduce resistance and encourage transport operators’ participation in the transition to electric buses.

Involving the Community in Project Planning and Monitoring

Cities often lack the localized data, community insights, and institutional mechanisms needed to understand neighborhood-level climate impacts and embed them into planning.

To overcome this gap, municipalities can develop community-generated evidence systems, such as climate social auditsInstitutional and legal frameworks are necessary for providing assurance of the integrity of financial information and of compliance with budgetary rules and procedure. Technical specifications: These..., neighborhood assessments, or participatory mapping, to collect fine-grained vulnerability data. By integrating this information directly into existing planning processes, adaptation strategies are better aligned with on-the-ground conditions and service gaps.

See how Semarang, Indonesia used community data to make climate vulnerability visible in city planning.

Looking Ahead

Together, these experiences suggest that collaborative, people-centered climate governance is becoming a viable pathway for tackling some of the hardest challenges in adaptation and environmental management. This is why, as a community, we must continue fostering this approach by ensuring that cities have access to two essential forms of support.

Technical support to help institutionalize participation across climate policy domains
As climate governance increasingly requires shared planning, cities can benefit from stronger capabilities to design structured co-creation processes, facilitate multi-actor coalitions, and translate public priorities into actionable plans.

Strengthening this capacity through initiatives like People Powered’s Climate Democracy Accelerator can help collaborative governance move from isolated pilots to a stable, repeatable feature of local climate institutions.

Strong platforms for exchanging concrete, small-scale climate solutions that work on the ground
Cities across the OGP Local network are testing practical, neighborhood-scale interventions. To help these innovations travel further, cities benefit from platforms that enable them to compare approaches, understand implementation challenges, refine low-cost solutions, and adapt proven ideas to new contexts.

Expanding spaces such as the OGP Local Climate Circle can accelerate this peer learning and broaden the adoption of grounded, community-centered climate solutions.

By continuing to strengthen these foundations, cities can pursue climate strategies that are more responsive, more trusted, and more resilient over time. The path ahead will demand many innovations, but one lesson is already clear: climate progress grows when collaboration becomes part of how institutions work every day.