C40 Cities Announces New Clinton Global Initiative Commitment To Help Cities Prepare For Severe Weather And Natural Disasters

NEW YORK, May 6, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) today announced a new Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action that will help cities better prepare for natural disasters and severe weather incidents. The new C40 Risk Assessment Framework will create a common approach for cities to assess climate risk and provide a process to help cities prioritize risk before investing in climate actions.

"In the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the recent floods in Jakarta and Sao Paulo, it is clear we need to empower cities to take the necessary actions to protect their citizens, infrastructure and economies from the devastating impacts of natural disasters," said C40 Chair, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "While a growing number of cities have efforts underway to measure climate risk, there is a high degree of uncertainty and variability in their methodologies and approaches. The C40 Risk Assessment Framework, by creating a common approach to this challenge, will become the global standard by which all cities measure and manage climate risk."

Today's announcement builds on President Bill Clinton's decades of leadership – most recently through the Clinton Foundation – to enhance the resiliency of U.S. infrastructure and communities. 

Drawing on C40's successful efforts to develop a common global standard for measuring community-scale greenhouse gas emissions (GPC), the C40 is launching an effort to develop an adaptation risk assessment framework to create a common approach to measuring risk that could be used by all cities to help them quantify the impact and manage their climate risks.

By strengthening climate risk assessment efforts via the Risk Assessment Framework, cities will be able to invest in the implementation of the most needed climate change actions over time. The development of a global standard for community-scale adaptation risk assessment would:

• Enable cities to assess local climate risks with confidence
• Allow for local prioritizing of investments to mitigate those risks
• Achieve comparability between cities
• Enable banks to better structure lending for resilient infrastructure, and the develop standards for accessing adaptation-linked finance
• Enable insurance companies to value risk in a uniform way, ensuring continued investment in urban infrastructure

At today's CGI Mid-Year Meeting, President Clinton, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, and C40 Chair Bloomberg participated in a roundtable of C40 Mayors and select leaders from the private sector – including executives from the banking, insurance, and engineering community – that expounded on finding a common language to measure and manage climate risk. Participants explored opportunities for investing in adaptation to climate change, building resilient urban infrastructure, and mitigating risk. The discussion also centered around how public and private sectors can join together in identifying solutions to helping cities be better prepared for natural disasters and severe weather incidents in the long term. 

The development of the Risk Assessment Framework will be guided by the newly-launched Climate Risk Assessment Network, which will bring together C40 Cities and outside partners such as lending institutions, technical experts, and the insurance industry. The first convening of the Climate Risk Assessment Network will take place in Rotterdam on June 5-6, 2013 to lay the groundwork and next steps for growing the framework.

ABOUT C40
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) is a network of large and engaged cities from around the world committed to implementing meaningful and sustainable climate related actions locally that will help address climate change globally. C40 was established in 2005 and expanded via a partnership in 2006 with President William J. Clinton's Climate Initiative (CCI). The current chair of the C40 is New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. To learn more about the work of C40 and our Cities, please visit www.c40.org, follow us on Twitter @c40cities and like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/C40Cities.

About the Clinton Global Initiative
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made more than 2,300 commitments, which are already improving the lives of more than 400 million people in over 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at $73.5 billion.

SOURCE C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group