The COP31 Presidency of Türkiye has given a prominent role to cities, infrastructure and water at this year’s Conference, including through the Resilient Cities and Built Environment Day, which the Presidency has integrated into the Leaders Summit (12 November). Among its priorities for the Global Climate Action Agenda, the Presidency has announced three goals: raising the share of final energy demand met by electricity from just over 20 per cent today to 35 per cent by 2035; halving the growth in global waste by 2035; and reducing energy consumption intensity in the building sector by at least 25 per cent by 2035. These are goals announced by the Presidency to guide voluntary action, not negotiated commitments. Axis IV (Building Resilience for Cities, Infrastructure and Water) is closely linked to all three, as their delivery depends to a large extent on buildings, infrastructure, water, mobility and waste systems at the local level. Contributions to these goals are complementary across the five Activation Groups, connecting multilevel governance, buildings and construction, urban development and infrastructure, water, and circularity. Axis IV is also aligned with the Presidency’s focus on Zero Waste, circularity and resource efficiency, which cuts across all six Axes of the Global Climate Action Agenda. COP31 also marks the first year after the submission of NDCs 3.0. UN-Habitat’s analysis of the 142 NDCs 3.0 submitted by mid-April 2026 found that 80 per cent include well-developed urban content, up from 49 per cent under NDC 2.0, while urban climate finance remains the least developed means of implementation, present in 19 per cent of NDCs.
Co-convened by the COP31 Presidency, the UNFCCC secretariat through the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action, the Climate High-Level Champions and the Axis IV members, this Synthesis Roundtable brings together the five Activation Groups, their Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) and implementing partners to reflect collectively on the Axis as a whole: what has been achieved, which implementation challenges persist across sectors, and where cross-sectoral collaboration can accelerate delivery. It brings together the results of the Axis IV showcase events and feeds into the Resilient Cities and Built Environment Day on 12 November, including thematic roundtables, the World Leaders Summit Segment on Urban Resilience and Climate Change, and the Intergovernmental Council for Buildings and Climate (ICBC) Ministerial Meeting.