Effectively aligning efforts to address climate change across national, provincial and city government levels – vertical integration – helps to facilitate faster, more ambitious climate action. It means coordinating climate policies, plans and implementation across different levels of government, maximising the potential of each level through collective efforts, and promoting top-down and bottom-up information exchange.
This guide explains the principles and practices of enabling climate action through vertical integration and provides a series of good practice examples from around the world. It also introduces a suite of tools and resources which can help city governments to evaluate barriers and opportunities for vertical integration and support the planning and implementation of strategies to improve it.