Local capacity building and policy evaluation in climate and environmental governance

Identifying challenges and opportunities to enable and accelerate urban transformational solutions is increasingly urgent, particularly as the world becomes more urbanized and approaches an environmental overshoot scenario. This paper focuses on the role of local capacities in climate policy and action. Following a brief introduction, the paper presents the conceptual framework on capacities and capacity building to be used and introduces Mexico City as the selected case study. Local climate-environmental institutional capacities are assessed by developing and applying a Local Climate-Environmental Institutional Capacity Index (ICI-CLIMA), which encompasses seven valuation components and employs a multicriteria evaluation approach. The main findings for the 2019 and 2022 ICI-CLIMA valuations are presented and discussed in relation to their implications for climate-environmental policy, action, and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL). The paper concludes that strengthening local capacity building as well as institutionalizing MEL systems and policy evaluation practices are essential for advancing a more robust, systemic, and integrated climate policy and action, informing investments, fostering the uptake of learning processes, and enabling more successful urban solutions.