The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) Strategic Plan for 2026-2028 is designed to accelerate city-led climate action and cement GCoM’s role as the leading global alliance for local climate and energy initiatives. Building on the momentum of the past ten years, and recognizing the urgency of the climate crisis for cities around the world, this plan shifts from commitment to implementation, prioritizing the Deepen and Accelerate goals. The Grow goal has evolved to focus on expanding participation from cities in the Global South and emerging regions, and enhancing the level of active engagement across all signatories.
GCoM’s updated core vision is to empower cities and local governments worldwide to transition rapidly towards a climate-safe, resilient, and inclusive future.
This plan outlines strategies for new and expanded multilevel partnerships and forms of global and regional collaboration that will enable cities and local governments to deliver on their promise for bold climate action.
With this renewed focus, GCoM is strengthening its support to cities to enhance implementation, monitor progress, and scale impact, ensuring that local governments remain key drivers of global climate ambition by:
- Elevating Multi-level Governance: Amplify the role of local leaders, urging national governments to empower local action and ensuring national climate plans (NDCs) fully integrate and support subnational efforts, as exemplified by the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnership for Climate Action (CHAMP) coalition.
- Addressing Global South Vulnerabilities: Increase focus on cities in the Global South. These regions, despite their low emissions contributions, face the most severe climate impacts and compounding challenges.
- Unlocking Finance: Local ambition alone is not enough. Expand efforts to empower subnational actors with dedicated and direct financial access, working with partners like multilateral development banks to aggregate and package local urban investment proposals.
GCoM is delivering this strategy through five primary pathways representing categories of action that guide alliance activities. To ensure effective implementation and tangible progress toward its strategic objectives, GCoM is using key performance indicators (KPIs) for tracking progress, aligning actions, and maintaining transparency with stakeholders. A set of nine outcome indicators developed during the 2023-2025 reporting period, and directly aligned with GCoM’s three overarching strategic goals: Deepen, Accelerate, and Grow will continue to be used between 2026 and 2028.
Successful execution of this plan will ensure GCoM remains a powerful catalyst for city climate ambition on the world stage, accelerating the achievement of local, regional, and global climate goals.
ALL aliance driven by the efforts of regional and national covenants
