The world’s cities are growing faster than ever before, and urbanization has proven to be a fundamental driver of economic growth and societal progress. However, this unprecedented growth has a significant impact on the well-being and health of people and the planet. Cities are significantly contributing to rising emissions and loss of nature while also being vulnerable to their impacts. At the same time, people, nature, and the built environment are closely connected in cities, enabling decision makers to develop integrated solutions which can deliver multiple and synergistic benefits. Local action by cities has become central to achieving global environmental and sustainable development goals.
As the financial mechanism of several major multilateral environmental agreements, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) recognizes that the challenges facing cities cannot be addressed separately. Rather, they call for a holistic and integrated approach to ensure that solutions are implemented in a synergistic fashion across the cityscape. Such an approach also ensures that investments in the cityscape are anchored within a broader framework for urban sustainability and resilience.
As part of its integrated approach programming that targets the sustainable transformation of key systems, the GEF launched the Sustainable Cities Program (SCP) during the sixth GEF replenishment cycle (GEF-6, 2014-2018) as a flagship program focusing on urban system transformation. The SCP focuses on the drivers of environmental degradation in the urban system and advances integrated solutions to generate global environmental benefits along with social and economic gains.
From an initial focus on tackling drivers of greenhouse gas emissions during the GEF-6 pilot phase, the program expanded in GEF-7 to address multiple environmental challenges through integrated urban planning and then advanced in GEF-8 by focusing on systems transformation. Collectively, the program supports nearly 100 cities across 33 countries to adopt nature-positive, net-zero, resilient and circular pathways of growth.
Building on nearly a decade of investments in the Sustainable Cities Program, the GEF Secretariat in collaboration with the program lead agencies—the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank—convened a technical learning workshop in April 2025 to synthesize initial lessons from the SCP. The workshop took place in UNEP’s Paris office, with over 40 participants from the GEF Secretariat, GEF Agencies, implementation partners, the GEF Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel, the GEF Independent Evaluation Office, and external experts from academia and research organizations.
The workshop focused on global urbanization trends and their links to climate, nature loss, and pollution; summarized insights from the GEF's Sustainable Cities Program; and identified key lessons, challenges, and opportunities for integrated sustainable urban development.
This report summarizes strategic insights emerged from the discussions, offers concrete examples, and presents recommendations and key takeaways from the workshop for global uptake.