A/HRC/44/44 climate change effects that diminish human rights (for instance, to housing, water and sanitation) apply to urban areas (see A/64/255). A complicating factor in this regard is that cities are already sites of inequality. 54 As such, climate change may worsen inequalities between peoples living in urban areas.55 In the context of these concerns, local governments are among the most proactive authorities pursuing climate change mitigation and adaptation. Their actions demonstrate a willingness to take responsibility for the welfare of both their own residents and peoples everywhere, often through transnational partnerships. This is a key way in which human rights-based international solidarity in the context of climate change is being advanced. 23. For example, these subnational governments express international solidarity when they voluntarily participate in the international climate regime, take on commitments and create “trans-local collaborations” for resilience within and across State borders.56 Cities, especially, tend to set high ambitions to cut emissions, sometimes higher than their national governments. 57 Moreover, transnational city networks – such as Local Governments for Sustainability, Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy – facilitate learning and capacity-building in the climate change area; in some cases, they require targets and monitoring. 58 Participants in such networks are primarily located in Europe and North America, and could better engage less globally connected cities. 59 Nonetheless, subnational experimentation may eventually produce transformative effects across wide geographical areas around the world because it can disrupt our reliance on fossil fuels throughout interlocking energy systems that transcend political boundaries. 60 Urban governance thus has the potential to diminish the overall negative effects of climate change on the enjoyment of international human rights through both solidarity-driven partnerships and catalytic reforms. 24. In addition to cities, other local governments are seeking to demonstrate international solidarity by compensating for deficiencies in the ambitions of their respective States. One example is the We Are Still In coalition, whose signatories are committing to the Paris Agreement, despite their national government’s recalcitrance, and include indigenous leaders, mayors, governors, non-governmental organizations, businesses and university chancellors. Subnational jurisdictions that put a price on carbon are also linking their programmes, such as networked cap-and-trade schemes.61 Turnover is a challenge for carbon pricing networks, as some jurisdictions have reneged on their commitments. Market mechanisms also experience volatility and gaming, encourage privatization and cannot alone yield the transformation needed to address climate change. Given these and other problems with market mechanisms, discussed throughout the report, carbon pricing networks are a limited form of human rights-based international solidarity. 62 Specifically, carbon pricing networks aim to reduce emissions (which in itself is an expression of human rights-based international solidarity) and generate public revenues to fund social programmes that foster goodwill towards climate action and enhance human rights in daily life, such as public transportation systems, resilient buildings and financial assistance to households. 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 United Nations Human Settlements Programme, World Cities Report: Urbanization and Development – Emerging Futures (Nairobi, 2016), pp. 16–20. Ibid. See Jeroen van der Heijden, “Cities and subnational governance: high ambitions, innovative instruments and polycentric collaborations?”, in Governing Climate Change: Polycentric Action?, Andrew Jordan and others, eds. (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2018). Ibid., p. 83; and Taedong Lee, “Global cities and transnational climate change networks”, Global Environmental Politics, vol. 13, No. 1 (2013). Jennifer S. Bansard, Philipp H. Pattberg and Oscar Widerberg, eds., “Cities to the rescue? Assessing the performance of transnational municipal networks in global climate governance”, International Environmental Agreements, vol. 17 (2017), pp. 238 and 241; and Lee, “Global cities”, pp. 110–111. Lee, “Global cities”, pp. 110–111. See Steven Bernstein and Matthew Hoffmann, “The politics of decarbonization and the catalytic impact of subnational climate experiments”, Policy Science, vol. 51, No. 2 (2018). Ibid. See the discussions in the present report on carbon markets at para. 49. 9