Integrating Urban and Subnational Priorities into Country Platforms: Strengthening Global Commitments

Filling the vast financing gap to meet the Paris Agreement goals requires significantly scaling up urban climate finance. This can help to harness cities’ great emissions reduction potential and build resilience to the increasing climate-related impacts they face.

Urban climate finance must grow by at least fivefold, to USD 4.3 trillion per year, for cities to meet their mitigation targets by 2030 (CCFLA 2024a). This demands rapid, coordinated action across all levels of government to align development and climate finance with national, regional, and local priorities. Funds must also be deployed strategically to maximize impact.

Country platforms are a key emerging mechanism for increasing climate and development finance. Led by national governments, these instruments can provide a powerful means of fostering collaboration among development partners around a shared strategic vision and priorities (Gilmour et al., 2024). Country platforms help to advance recipient nations’ transformational goals in priority areas—including climate finance—with international support to scale up investment. To realize country platforms’ full potential, national governments can opt to incorporate urban and subnational climate objectives in their design and priorities.¹

_{1 Responsibilities for implementing and overseeing climate issues may vary, depending on countries’ political systems. We, therefore, use the term “subnational governments” to refer to political entities and “urban” to refer to the sectoral perspective.}

The same barriers that hinder the integration of subnational priorities into national climate strategies and plans can also sideline these perspectives in country platforms. These include misalignment with national political priorities, limited engagement channels, and capacity gaps. Many subnational governments in developing economies lack fiscal powers, access to finance, and technical capacity, curtailing their role in national development planning. Addressing these barriers, laid out in Table ES1, can enable more inclusive and effective national strategies and integrate urban climate concerns into country platforms.

CCFLA’s vision for urban-inclusive country platforms is of nationally led platforms that have integrated subnational and urban climate agendas. Achieving this requires building a strong multi-stakeholder coordination mechanism that systematically integrates urban/subnational priorities into the design, governance, and implementation of climate and development strategies. This can ensure meaningful participation of subnational governments, alignment of local and national climate plans, and the mobilization of finance for urban mitigation, adaptation, and resilience projects. By embedding multilevel governance, sectoral coordination, and inclusive financing mechanisms, these platforms could enhance the effectiveness, equity, and scalability of country-driven climate action.

This paper presents a framework for urban-inclusive country platforms, aiming to support national governments in systematically integrating urban and subnational needs into the design, governance, financing, and implementation of country platforms.

This framework is particularly aimed at supporting national governments in countries characterized by rapid urbanization and the associated growth potential, along with climate and development challenges. It may be especially useful in contexts where urban centers are major sources of emissions and climate risks yet struggle with policy alignment and financial constraints and are often excluded from decision-making. In such settings, incorporating an urban and subnational perspective into country platforms can help to avoid emissions-intensive development pathways and build resilient communities and infrastructure.

The proposed framework includes a sequential roadmap moving from initial engagement to implementation to help national governments meaningfully engage subnational governments and urban priorities in decision-making, policy alignment, and resource allocation. The roadmap builds upon the five stages of Tanaka and Gilmour’s Country Platform Development Escalator (2025), adapting this tool to focus on the urban level, informed by G20 principles.²

These stages are: 

1. Initial Engagement: Establish whole-of-government ownership, engage urban ministries, and create inclusive coordination mechanisms such as national secretariats and urban taskforces.

2. Program Readiness: Align sectoral and cross-sectoral priorities across levels of government, including directly working on policy changes, and formally include subnational adaptation needs and just transition priorities in planning processes.

3. Investment Program: Support cities in developing Local Climate Action Plans (LCAPs) and project pipelines, provide tailored project preparation, and aggregate subnational investments to attract larger-scale financing.

4. Financing: Deploy concessional and innovative financial instruments targeting cities, leverage national and local financial intermediaries, and enable city-private sector engagement through technical assistance (TA) and matchmaking.

5. Implementation: Promote phased, adaptive delivery that includes city-level tracking, peer learning, civil society engagement, and coordinated delivery of TA and finance at the subnational level.

Each stage includes concrete operating features and indicators to guide platform developers and financiers in building inclusive, scalable, and results-oriented country platforms. The framework is not intended to be prescriptive but offers flexible entry points for countries at various stages of platform development. While these operating features are inherently cross-cutting, they have been aligned with the stage where their impact is most critical.

_{2 These principles provide a non-binding framework to guide countries and development partners in designing and implementing country platforms that are country-owned, adapted to local contexts, and focused on sustainable development through inclusive collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement (G20 2020).}

Raising finance to the level needed to meet Paris Agreement goals requires scaling up support for cities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Currently, 56% of the global population resides in cities, a figure projected to rise to 70% by 2050 (World Bank 2023a). Cities also contribute over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC 2022). Urban areas, especially in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), are increasingly experiencing severe and frequent extreme weather events. The responsibility of responding to these climate emergencies most often falls upon subnational governments.

Subnational governments are crucial to the success of countries’ climate action but lack the funds to drive these efforts. Urban and subnational governments typically regulate and tax emissions-intensive sectors, such as buildings, land use, and transport. However, they face significant barriers to accessing climate finance. Urban climate finance must increase fivefold, to USD 4.3 trillion per year, for cities to meet their climate mitigation targets by 2030 (CCFLA 2024a). Addressing this challenge requires commitment to urban climate action at the national and global levels, strengthening multilevel coordination and enabling environments. Cities also need support to build their capacities and capital mobilization, including to resolve issues of creditworthiness and access to capital markets (CCFLA 2024a).

Cities have shown leadership and collaboration on climate action, and national governments are increasingly assigning them responsibilities for addressing climate change (World Bank 2022). More than 120 countries have subnational-level climate policies, though these often lack funding, national support, multilevel governance coordination, and capacity (IPCC 2023). The NDC Partnership reported in 2020 that national governments had increasingly requested support for engaging with subnational actors within its country engagement process, with 36 countries making 134 such requests in mitigation sectors like transport, energy, and waste (NDC Partnership 2020).

Development finance institutions (DFIs)³ could play a bigger role in funding urban climate action. While DFIs provided 28% of all global climate finance in 2021/22, they only provided 7% of tracked climate finance going to cities (CCFLA 2024a). Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are particularly well positioned to accelerate urban climate action by using their concessional funds to leverage private finance and other public investment, especially in EMDEs. Yet, subnational governments face challenges in accessing this finance, including capacity constraints, political misalignment with national governments, and limited project scale.

Mobilizing finance to help national and subnational governments achieve their climate and development goals will take coordinated efforts across public and private sources. To do so, domestic and international funders must shift from project-based to strategic, programmatic approaches. Many international coalitions, including the 620, its working groups, and the Independent Expert Group, as well as the Climate COPs and the Group of MDBs in their Joint Statement at COP29 (Group of MDBS 2024), have considered Country Climate and Development Investment Platforms as an instrument to increase country-led climate transitions (Tanaka et al. 2024).

Country platforms are “voluntary country-level mechanisms, set out by governments and designed to foster collaboration among development partners, based on a shared strategic vision and priorities” (Tanaka and Gilmour 2025). Their objectives may include bolstering domestic markets and government capacity and increasing the implementation of climate transition plans, such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). They are also evolving to act as a mechanism to address some MDB reform agenda requests for improved collaboration among DFIs. Country platforms for climate, nature, and/or development finance are being implemented or discussed in countries including Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Vietnam, Malawi, and Tanzania (ACF 2025). These platforms can drive a country-led shared vision and priorities with a range of climate and development stakeholders, such as vertical and climate-environmental funds, NDBs, and the private sector.

However, national governments have not yet integrated urban and subnational⁴ needs into their country platforms’ objectives and sectoral priorities (see Annex). Given the importance of cities in driving the climate response, this could limit country platforms’ ability to address critical challenges.

This policy brief is laid out as follows:

• Section 1 provides context on existing country platforms and why such mechanisms must prioritize urban climate concerns.

• Section 2 proposes an adapted framework for urban-inclusive country platforms and practical steps to enable them.

• Section 3 provides case studies of ongoing initiatives.

_{3 According to the OECD. “National and international development finance institutions (DFIs) are specialised development banks or subsidiaries set up to support private sector development in developing countries. They are usually majority-owned by national governments and source their capital from national or international development funds or benefit from government guarantees.”}

_{4 Depending on each country’s political system, responsibilities for implementing and overseeing climate issues may vary. Throughout this brief, we, therefore, use the term “subnational governments” to refer to political entities and “urban” to refer to the sectoral perspective. We define subnational government as a decentralized entity having general responsibilities and total or partial autonomy (e.g., over budget, staff, assets) to implement urban climate action. Depending on whether the country has a unitary or federal system, subnational governments could be municipal, intermediary, state, or regional governments (OECD 2022). We define “urban” as areas characterized by a high population density, built environment, and social and economic activity—often governed at the subnational level (including the municipal level).}

1.1 Urban-Inclusive Country Platforms

Country platforms have supported coordinated development efforts and are now central Country platforms have supported coordinated development efforts and are now central to advancing climate action. Initiatives like the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JET Ps) have pioneered multi-stakeholder models to accelerate investment in climate and development goals (CPI 2024; Gilmour et al. 2024; BMZ 2025). These were first established in 2021 in South Africa, followed by Senegal, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Other platforms in Bangladesh, Egypt, and Brazil since 2022 have expanded this focus to broader climate action, including adaptation and resilience.⁵ While there is no universal definition of country platforms, we highlight some emerging common principles reflecting lessons learned from the JET-Ps, the G20 Reference Framework for Effective Country Platforms,⁶ and other recent documents (see Group of MDBs 2024; Tanaka and Gilmour 2025). These principles are detailed below:

• Political commitment and country ownership: Country platforms must be initiated and led by countries themselves, ensuring strong political commitment and alignment with the Paris Agreement. This ownership drives ambition around climate targets and fosters a whole-of-economy approach. Action through the platform can be driven by the underlying national, sectoral, and subnational Paris-aligned transition pathway assessments.

• Local country needs: Effective platforms can accelerate the identification of local investment needs and programs. This could involve building on existing activities, coordination, and local mechanisms.

• Mobilizing finance from private and development partners: Focus on resource mobilization from the public and private sectors at national, regional, and international levels. This approach should be programmatic, incorporating multi-year, thematic, sectoral, or cross-sectoral strategies to drive systemic and holistic climate and development investment.

• Collaboration and transparency: Enhance collaboration and transparency through voluntary information sharing and continuous learning among development partners, as well as by facilitating the implementation of key standards, including those related to environmental, social, and governance, procurement, debt sustainability, transparency, and local capacity building.

_{5 Section 3 includes case studies on country platforms in Egypt, Brazil and India. See Annex for more details on existing country platform implementation.}

_{6 These principles provide a non-binding framework to guide countries and development partners in designing and implementing country platforms that are country-owned, adapted to local contexts, and focused on sustainable development through inclusive collaboration, transparency and continuous improvement (G20 2020).}

Country-led platforms are key to fostering the implementation of country-driven transition plans in line with NDCs, NAPs, Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategies, and others (Tanaka et al. 2024). They can cover mitigation, adaptation, nature, biodiversity, and other sustainable development priorities in various sectors and apply different implementation models across different countries. Most of all, they can encourage a shift from a short-term project focus to a longer-term programmatic approach. Country platforms are intended to move away from the current project-by-project climate finance approach, where countries negotiate climate loans and grants with different financial institutions in a fragmented manner. Ensuring that international development partners operate “as a system” is key to improving efficiency and coherence in supporting countries’ climate investment needs (Tanaka et al. 2024).

An urban-inclusive country platform, as proposed in this report, is a nationally led platform that integrates urban priorities. Achieving this requires building a strong multi-stakeholder coordination mechanism that systematically integrates urban and/or subnational priorities into the design, governance, and implementation of climate and development strategies. This can ensure meaningful participation of city and regional governments, alignment of local and national climate plans, and the mobilization of finance for urban mitigation, adaptation, and resilience projects. By embedding multilevel governance, sectoral coordination, and inclusive financing mechanisms, these platforms could enhance the effectiveness, equity, and scalability of country-driven climate action.

Few country platforms to date have directly engaged stakeholders at a subnational level or prioritized urban climate action as key to their development. A partial exception is South Africa’s JET-P, where the national task force conducted some consultations with local governments, and municipal projects were included in the overall portfolio (Gilmour et al. 2024).

National governments that integrate urban climate concerns into their country platforms can strengthen mitigation and adaptation outcomes. Urban-inclusive country platforms can enable subnational governments to gain greater policy and capacity support and increased TA for project pipeline development, which can help mobilize capital to achieve their climate goals. This can increase the impact and effectiveness of the country platform to reduce emissions and build resilience of the country as a whole.

1.2 Barriers to Implementing Subnational and Urban-Inclusive Country Platforms

There are challenges to implementing country platforms with strengthened multilevel governance and/or enhanced urban sectoral focus. We classify these barriers into three categories: governance, project-level, and financial. The barriers hinder the integration of subnational governments and urban sectoral focus into country platform processes and priorities.

These barriers curtail subnational governments’ participation in national development planning, which in turn reduces their consideration as integral stakeholders for implementing country platforms. Integrating urban dimensions into country platforms will require overcoming several of these systemic barriers (Table 1).

By recognizing the specific needs of subnational governments and ensuring their representation in investment plans, policies, regulations, and financing mechanisms, country platforms can drive sustainable and resilient development. Collaboration between all levels of government and international partners is crucial for the success of these efforts. Bangladesh’s Climate Development Partnership demonstrates such a collaborative, multilevel approach to support the country’s climate and development goals (Box 1).

This section outlines a framework for urban-inclusive country platforms, grounded in the premise that prioritizing urban climate action can significantly enhance the impact and effectiveness of national climate efforts. We outline key considerations for national governments to incorporate cities and subnational actors that could be integrated into the emerging phases of establishing country platforms focused on supporting urban climate action and impact. This framework is particularly aimed at supporting national governments in countries characterized by rapid urbanization and the associated growth potential, along with climate and development challenges. It may be especially relevant in contexts where urban centers are major sources of emissions and climate risks yet struggle with policy alignment and financial constraints and are often excluded from decision-making.

2.1 Conditions for an Urban-Inclusive Country Platform

For an urban-inclusive country platform to be effective, certain enabling conditions must be in place to overcome barriers and ensure that subnational governments can participate.

These conditions are:

• Multilevel government coordination: When subnational governments have greater fiscal autonomy, strong coordination between national and subnational entities becomes crucial to aligning policies, funding mechanisms, and implementation frameworks. In more centralized systems, clear mandates and well-structured intergovernmental collaboration are essential to empower cities and integrate urban priorities into national strategies.

• Strong subnational financial and climate strategies: Achieving a critical mass of cities with well-defined climate action plans enables more coherent and scalable integration of urban efforts into national platforms. Similarly, financial plans enhance subnational governments’ ability to secure funding by demonstrating fiscal responsibility and investment readiness, improving their access to national investment funds, concessional finance, private sector partnerships, and innovative funding mechanisms.

• Project preparation support: Municipal governments, especially those governing small and intermediary cities, require support to overcome capacity and skill shortages in preparing investable projects and connecting them with finance.

2.2 Urban-Inclusive Framework

The approach outlined below builds upon Tanaka and Gilmour’s (2025) Country Platform Development Note, evolving elements of their Escalator concept by applying a subnational lens. This aims to provide existing and emerging country platforms with a sequential action pathway from initial subnational engagement to implementation. Doing so can enhance the effectiveness of country platforms, making them more responsive to subnational climate finance needs and development priorities.

Table 2 below outlines our framework along the following dimensions:

• Stage refers directly to the five main stages of Tanaka and Gilmour’s Development Escalator, reflecting a general trajectory for countries on moving from initial engagement to implementation of country platforms.

• Operating feature is based on the existing proposed model for country platforms, including the voluntary, non-binding principles for effective country platforms approved by the G20 Presidency in 2020 (G20 2020), and the 2024 input paper for TF-CLIMA under the Brazilian presidency of G20, ‘Country Climate and Development Investment Platforms’ (Tanaka et al. 2024). While these operating features are inherently crosscutting, they have been aligned with the stage where their impact is most critical.

• Indicators of successful urban integration provides non-comprehensive guidance for operationalizing these features in urban-inclusive country platforms. These features ensure effective coordination, financing, and implementation of climate and development initiatives while maintaining country ownership and leadership.

In order to provide a starting point for applying the framework, we present here one case study of an existing country platform in a centralized country (Egypt’s NWFE) and opportunities to apply the framework to two federal countries (Brazil and India).

3.1 Egypt's Nexus for Water, Food, and Energy

s Egypt’s country platform, the Nexus of Water, Food, and Energy (NWFE), is already well established, having launched in 2022. However, there is clear potential to embed stronger urban dimensions and engage subnational governments in the platform’s next phase. To support this, we outline potential pathways for integration in the table below. These could lay the foundation for determining concrete recommendations or implementation mechanisms through further in-depth analysis by actors closely involved in NWFE.

3.2 Brazil's Climate and Ecological Transformation Investment Platform

Brazil offers a timely and strategic example of how country platforms can integrate urban and subnational priorities, particularly in the lead-up to COP30 in Belem. As a federated country with strong subnational institutions, Brazil has the governance capacity to design inclusive and decentralized climate platforms. In 2024, the national government launched the Climate and Ecological Transformation Investment Platform (BIP) to accelerate ecological transformation, decarbonization, and inclusive development (GFANZ 2024). The BIP explicitly references cities and subnational governments as key actors, presenting a strong foundation for developing an urban-inclusive country platform.

3.3 India's Opportunity to Increase Finance for Climate Action

India presents a promising context for urban integration in country platform structures, owing to its federal governance model, large and growing urban population, and well-established subnational climate frameworks. While India has not yet formalized a single, coordinated country platform for climate finance, it has a diverse ecosystem of national programs and subnational mechanisms that together reflect the building blocks of such a platform. These include targeted national schemes, decentralized financing tools, and alignment efforts between national policies and local climate actions. India’s experience offers important insights for designing urban-inclusive country platforms in federal systems where climate action is distributed across multiple levels of government. Table 5 provides this summary.

This paper explores the benefits for countries in integrating urban sectoral priorities and subnational governments within their nascent country platforms. It also presents a framework for creating such urban-inclusive platforms for those countries seeking to do so. This structured approach aims to ensure that urban issues and subnational governments are integrated into country-led climate finance strategies. By addressing governance structures, project-level considerations, and financial mechanisms, the framework aims to overcome barriers that have historically limited subnational access to climate finance.

While country platforms have the potential to mobilize large-scale investments and coordinate national climate goals, their effectiveness can be enhanced through structured urban engagement. The experiences of Egypt, India, Brazil, and Bangladesh highlight the challenges and opportunities of embedding subnational priorities within these national platforms. By fostering multilevel governance, aligning urban investments with national priorities, and enabling direct access to climate finance, these platforms can bridge critical gaps in mobilizing resources for urban climate action.

National governments and stakeholders can use their political authority, convening power, and fiscal capacity to mitigate climate finance challenges subnational governments face. Platforms can align policies and plans across multiple levels of governance, bridge capacity gaps, and foster public-private partnerships to mobilize investments. In doing so, urban-inclusive country platforms can be transformative tools for scaling ambition, leadership, and finance to meet subnational climate goals.

Initial steps to support national governments seeking to improve urban integration in existing or planned country platforms include the following:

• CCFLA secretariat and its members could assist interested national governments in understanding the challenges and opportunities of applying the proposed framework to integrating subnational and urban perspectives into these platforms.

• National governments could use the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships7 (CHAMP) as a strategic tool to enhance urban components in their NDCs and climate strategies. This can lay the groundwork for urban-inclusive country platforms that align with national and global climate targets.

• MDBs, DFIs, and other supporting partners can support national governments through their consultation processes to pilot the framework in ongoing country platform discussions, enabling the structured engagement of urban and subnational actors.

• All actors can contribute to further research to document lessons learned and best practices for integrating urban climate priorities and subnational governments into country platforms. Developing case studies, comparative analyses, and data-driven insights will help refine the framework and inform future country platform designs.

The above steps can enable national governments to leverage urban-inclusive country platforms as a transformative tool for climate finance, ensuring that cities and subnational governments are not just beneficiaries but active partners in national and global climate action.

_{7 CHAMP is a commitment taken by national governments on a new way of working in partnership with their subnational governments, and in particular, on a new way of approaching the development and implementation of their next Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in time for COP30 in 2025. See: httDs://www.alobalcovenantofmavors.ora/chamo/.}