Cities, towns and regions are making big impacts in implementing their climate commitments by acting locally and partnering globally, a trend which is underlined at today's Global Climate Action day on Cities and Human Settlements at the UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakech.

Civic leaders at the event, co-organized by UNEP and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI), also outlined the main actions that national governments can now take in partnership with them to help achieve their local goals as a significant input to the success of national climate action plans - the nationally-determined contributions (NDCs).

Gino Van Begin, the ICLEI Secretary General said that the Paris Agreement entering into force is a very good news. He said that this only means that they can get down to he business of rapidly implementing the commitments it contains. 

Cities and Human Settlements day showcased the potential of local action for implementation, focused on resilience and building efficiency. There are some highlights of Cities and Human Settlement Day. 

One is wide coalition of partners - local government networks, academia and international organizations - will organize an International Scientific Conference on Climate Change and Cities in 2018. A call for a host city for the event will be announced at the Thematic Day. 

A new assessment tool, which will be presented during the Resilience showcase of the morning, will allow standardized qualitative reporting of adaptation commitments to the Global Covenant of Mayors.

The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) will deliver the main results of the Scoping report of the Alliance member's initiatives on subnational and local finance. The report confirms that early stage project development (readiness and upstream phases) are crucial to build on appropriate climate strategies and projects, and highlight financial engineering approaches supporting the development of urban climate strategies into concrete urban investment projects, including climate co-benefits and risk management perspectives.

And with this, the urban areas are important to implement the Paris Agreement because urban areas  represent an estimated 70% of energy-related global emissions. The buildings and construction sector alone accounts for over 20% of global GHG emissions. Achieving the sector's potential 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 will be critical to the success of the Paris Agreement.