How are cities building fairer, safer and greener communities?

C40 Cities’ 2024 annual report is out. From creating over 16 million good green jobs to making strides towards phasing out fossil fuels, we look back at a year of local action that led to global impact. 

Read the foreword, written by the C40 Co-Chairs, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan and Mayor of Freetown Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE :

Our cities are at the forefront of the climate emergency and our collective strength as C40 cities delivered a year of action, ambition and hope. We continue to build fairer, safer and greener cities for our residents.

In 2024, we saw the power of city-led action at critical moments. In London, we saw the results of our introduction of the world’s largest clean air zone, and it’s clear that Londoners are breathing cleaner air as a result. We also began our plan to clean our waterways over the next decade, bringing the same energy to our rivers that was brought to London’s air. We have seen London continue to embrace the opportunity of net zero, unlocking solar for our schools, saving them tens of thousands of pounds, and opening a new office for making our homes warmer, retrofitting to scale our social housing stock.

In September, we joined world leaders and decision-makers at the Summit of the Future, the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week which set the tone and expectation for climate action in 2025. At COP29 in Baku, where global commitments fell short, C40 mayors showcased city achievements on phasing out fossil fuels. At the U20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s President Lula delivered the U20 Communiqué to the G20, amplifying our call for multilevel collaboration. Even in the face of shifting political landscapes, C40 continued to influence global and national policies, reinforcing the essential role of cities in driving change.

C40 welcomed two new member cities, Fortaleza in Brazil and Casablanca in Morocco, expanding our Global South membership. The Clean Air Accelerator expanded its reach to 50 cities, climate budgeting gained momentum with front runner cities New York City, London, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro publishing their first budgets, and the C40 Cities Finance Facility helped cities in the Global South secure funding pathways for transformative projects, including urban flood risk alleviation along Medellín’s Rio Norte and utility-scale renewable solar farming in Cape Town. C40 cities also led a green job revolution, creating over 16 million good, green jobs on the way to 50 million by 2030. From reforestation in Freetown to net-zero building standards in London, we demonstrated that environmental sustainability and economic prosperity can go hand in hand.

As we look to the future, we will continue to scale High-Impact Actions and strengthen the role of city leadership in delivering global climate action. Together, we are not just imagining a better world – we are building it.

View the C40 Cities 2024 annual report.