Opening.

Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo representatives signing the letter of adhesion to the Network of Cities for Climate.

Ana Carolina Abreu, the Project Coordinator of Decentralization and Sustainable Development at KAS Brazil, presenting the Rio +30 Cities Conference.

Discussions on the construction of municipal public policies on climate change.

Distribution of seedlings of native plants in the city of Niterói.

The Brazilian Climate Change Conference (CBMC) is a movement conceived by Ethos Institute and coordinated by several non-governmental organizations, social movements, traditional populations, local governments and the scientific community. The initiative emerged in 2019 with the aim of filling the gap of national action in global climate governance, through debates, content construction and multisectoral articulation. Thus, proposing ways to ensure climate security, the preservation and maintenance of quality of life and suggesting mechanisms for the decarbonization of the Brazilian economy to face the climate crisis. The main product of the conference this year is a letter of statewide climate commitment that is being built among the co-organizers for presentation to candidates for the state government for this year's elections.

In this fourth edition, the central theme is the impacts and solutions of climate emergency and vulnerability. Considering that territories, cities, and the local population are the first to feel the impacts, local managers will be the first to be called upon to respond to them. Hence, the city of Niterói, through the Climate Secretariat (the first Brazilian city to conceive a municipal climate management body), organized and hosted the second stage of the conference (preceded by an online stage) with the aim of discussing the rapid and effective adaptation of cities in the face of disasters and socio-environmental changes caused by climate change. KAS Brazil is the co-organizer of the conference and was present at the event. We believe that political decentralization and integration, through the capacity building and awareness of local public managers and citizens, is the most effective mean of responding to and preventing these emergencies.

At the opening, some of the co-organizers such as Sustainable Amazon Foundation, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, and Brazilian Climate Center, highlighted the concern and urgency of the issue. Evidenced by recent events in Brazilian cities, such as heavy rains in Petrópolis, Recife and southern Bahia, causing inestimable economic and human losses.

After the official opening, the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro, together with the City Hall of Niterói and KAS Brazil, presented the Conference on Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Development – ​​Rio+30 Cities, which will take place between the 17th and 19th of October. An initiative led by the city of Rio, and supported by KAS Brazil, will discuss proposals to raise the ambition of cities' commitments to promote sustainable development and climate action today. Then, Niterói and other municipalities, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, signed the letter of adhesion to the Network of Cities for Climate, which, with the support of ICLEI, aims to accelerate the role of subnational governments in the climate agenda.

In the afternoon, the construction of the letter of commitment began among the co-organizers of the conference, which will be delivered to the candidates of the state government to elevate the performance of the next governments related to the fight against climate change and the continuity of the agenda. Ana Carolina Abreu, the Project Coordinator of Decentralization and Sustainable Development at KAS Brazil, mediated the process through a participatory methodology in order to facilitate the collective construction of positions. Through 4 investigative phases, participants were encouraged to understand the strengths and best practices to explore existing and necessary potentials of the state executive's performance for the carbon-neutral future that they want to achieve. Soon the letter will be consolidated and disseminated through the media of the co-organizers and presented to candidates throughout Brazil.

Finally, the day ended with two discussion panels on the construction of municipal public policies on climate change and metropolitan management of environmental risks and disaster prevention. Therefore, the conference ended with an important and necessary message about the subnational role in dealing with future crises and in the prevention of impacts that will come with the increase in climatic extremes.