The Cities That Never Sleep: Reinventing Diplomacy

Three questions to Emmanuelle Pinault

Director of City Diplomacy C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group

The global challenges we face have transformed diplomacy as we know it. While states navigate through the traditional codes of international leadership, cities are emerging as new diplomatic players. Cooperation between cities from all around the world now takes place within international organizations that gather mayors and local officials. They create spaces for more inclusive, flexible and progressive diplomacy, capable of tackling issues such as climate change, social justice and gender equality.In this interview, Emmanuelle Pinault, Director of City Diplomacy at C40, explains why we should be paying attention to cities, and how they pair with state-to-state diplomacy to create a new form of global governance.

What is city diplomacy? How and why did the C40 emerge as an alternative to state-to-state diplomacy?

City diplomacy describes the multiple ways through which cities act internationally and engage in global policy debates. Specifically, it concerns how they participate in intergovernmental processes, such as the UN, the G20, the OECD, the IPCC, etc.

Our approach to city diplomacy is threefold. Firstly, mayors take part in international debates in order to show the world their climate leadership. Secondly, we champion urban best practices and know-how in order to influence others to follow suit. The aim is to inspire actors, other cities, non-state actors and national governments to undertake equally ambitious climate action. Lastly, we aim at removing the existing barriers to cities’ climate action. In fact, there are a number of challenges that local governments face when bringing forward environmental agendas, whether political, organizational or financial. The cities’ diplomatic engagement helps lift some of those barriers.

C40 was created in 2005, by then London Mayor Ken Livingstone, after he hosted a G20 meeting and realized that climate change was not on the agenda. He thus decided to gather a group of his own, bringing together 20 fellow mayors from other international cities, to discuss what cities could do to tackle climate change. The meeting marked the birth of the C20, which eventually became the C40, as the premier forum for cities committed to taking actions for climate.

Along the years, as we witnessed nation-states fail to make substantial commitments for the environment, cities firmed up their engagement. Today, cities around the world are curbing their emissions and pledging for carbon neutrality by 2050, acting to cut their share of emissions by 2030 and decarbonizing urban activities. At the same time, the movement for city diplomacy has scaled up: 97 cities are now engaged in the C40, and many more are committed to the topic with other similar organizations. The Global Covenant of Mayors, for instance, has more than 10 000 signatories around the world.

Therefore, city diplomacy has become a channel for progressive and ambitious political leadership. It now goes beyond the climate issue and attempts to raise awareness and take action on a myriad of global challenges, such as migration (for example through the Mayors Migration Council), or Covid-19 more recently.

Along the years, as we witnessed nation-states fail to make substantial commitments for the environment, cities firmed up their engagement.

In the midst of all this, the role of C40 is primarily to be a forum, a place of exchange, for city leaders to share their best practices. At the mayoral level this takes the form of summits, conferences, mayoral webinars and high-level meetings on specific areas, such as waste management, energy efficiency in buildings, or with targeted decision-makers such as the G20, the WHO, the UNSG, national governments and so on.

These opportunities for discussion and sharing are an especially powerful way of fostering climate action. A study we conducted found that a third of climate actions in our membership is a direct result of interaction between members.

City diplomacy also allows to blur the North/South divide that often results from traditional diplomacy. This is not just taking place within C40. Most global city networks foster this necessity for inclusiveness and equality, helping to bring forward voices that otherwise wouldn’t be heard.

Among other things, city diplomacy offers new ways to overcome gender imbalances within the diplomatic arena. At the local level, there are more female leaders than at the national level. A lot of the city leaders who are taking action on climate and are engaged diplomatically are women. Take the recent Climate Summit hosted by US President Joe Biden in April: almost all of the National leaders who sat - virtually - at the table were men, apart from Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen. But in the subnational part of the Summit, all speakers were women, highlighting once again the gender bias of our contemporary governance system, while providing an example of shared leadership coming from the local level.

What are the biggest challenges of city diplomacy? Are they structural or temporary challenges?

In some countries, the idea of a city engaging in intergovernmental processes is still controversial, if not impossible. When the local scale lacks the political autonomy to pursue its own agenda, it’s difficult for mayors to have a proper voice on the global stage. City diplomacy is clearly linked to the existence, or the absence of local democracy.

But the prospect of city diplomacy is also dependent on its mayors’ ambitions for leadership and whether or not they want to pursue an agenda that might go beyond their government’s stance. Capacity is also key to a city’s engagement, as time and expertise are required in order to understand both global diplomacy and the intertwining of global and local issues. In return, local leaders will have to take the time to explain to their citizens, to whom they are accountable, why their global engagement matters. Without this link, local leaders will not ensure the popular support necessary to be involved in city diplomacy.

With regards to climate action, cities need to be financially capable of leveraging the funds that they need for investment. Most cities, even in rich countries, do not have sufficient resources to implement their ambitious climate action plans and therefore depend on transfers by national governments or partnerships with international institutions.

City diplomacy is clearly linked to the existence, or the absence of local democracy.

These challenges are perhaps more structural than temporary, as they depend on the broader governance and political system and the limits it poses to its actors.

The number of non-state diplomatic actors is ever on the rise, especially with the increasing place of private actors in international politics. What are the future prospects of city diplomacy?

The future of city diplomacy is intrinsically linked with the future of multilateralism. It is highly unlikely that state-to-state diplomacy will disappear or be completely replaced by city diplomacy. It is not desirable either, as we urgently need ambitious and determined national leadership to tackle the climate emergency.

Through their leadership in addressing global challenges, cities have gained the right to have a seat at the global table, and will play an important role in the redefinition of multilateralism. The traditional intergovernmental system inherited from the post-WWII era and embodied in the institutions of Bretton Woods and the UN is now outdated. But it does not need to disappear, rather to be reformed so as to adapt to new challenges and to devise concrete solutions. This new system needs to take the voices of multiple actors into consideration when it comes to its decision-making process.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been vocal about the redefinition of the UN system, and explained that the future of global governance will take the form of an inclusive, networked multilateralism, where nation-states cohabit, discuss and work with other actors, such as cities, regions, businesses, citizens, to solve global challenges. That is a vision shared by most mayors, and for us, the future of city diplomacy.

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