Exploring the factors that correlate with the achievement of GHG emissions reduction targets of 59 cities from different continents

The global warming is one of the biggest problems which faced nowadays humanity. Acknowledging the critical role of urban areas in the process of generating the greenhouse gases, the achievability of climate mitigation goals acquires special importance and meaning. The majority of cities as a significant player of producing GHGs has been coped against climate mitigation under the umbrella of national pledges, however, the new mechanisms established by Paris Agreement re-assessed the role of local actors and evaluate the potential of local governments mitigation plans and their value in limiting the rise of global temperature to 1.50C. In respect of this, it becomes more important the assessment of the level of achievement of GHG emissions reduction targets of cities, that is one of the main objectives of this thesis. The research assessed the level of climate mitigation target achievement of 59 cities from different continents and delineate the external and internal factors that correlate with the achievement of GHG emissions reduction target. The assessment of climate mitigation for 59 cities highlighted the consistencies or inconsistencies of local authorities climate mitigation pledges and estimated results, the effectiveness of the local climate mitigation actions. Different indicators have been measured to realize the level of achievement of GHG emissions reduction target in absolute and per capita terms. Trend analysis has been conducted for determining the GHG emissions reduction pathway of selected 59 cities. Thanks to the linear extrapolation have been assessed the target achievability in the targeted year. Correlation and T-Test analysis has been conducted by using SPSS, which helps to find the interrelation between the GHG emissions reduction target achievement and external, internal factors. Among internal factors were studied: socioeconomic, demographic, urbanization degree, climate, biophysical factors. As an external factor has been analyzed the membership of international climate networks Covenant of Mayors, C40 climate leadership group and Local Governments for Sustainability. The research findings indicate that 36% of cities will achieve the GHG emissions reduction target, 15% of cities are close to achieving and 49 % of cities will not achieve the committed target based on trend analysis. The cities with successful performances of the climate mitigation plans are mainly from European and North American continents. One of the important findings of this research is the GHG emissions reduction per capita depends on the ambitious level of cities target commitments. Those cities that have ambitious target the level of trend emission per capita is low. It is also worth to mention that with ambitious target gives a possibility to have significant decrease of the GHG emissions. The correlation analysis indicates a moderate correlation between cities achievement level of the GHG emissions reduction target and GDP per capita, cities geographical location, density. The T-Test analysis allows to exploring two external sufficient factor that are related to achievement of climate mitigation targets, that are a member of the Covenant of Mayors and being a member of more than one climate network. There is enough evidence to emphasize that CoM is the effective initiative among others in this used thesis sample, with its guidelines, coordination with local governments is more effective compared with other climate networks. The key achievement of this research is the exploration of factors that mainly interrelated to the achievement of climate mitigation goals. Exploring the factors that correlate with the achievement of GHG emissions reduction targets of European cities iv In total, the combination of socioeconomic, climate, the degree of urbanization factors with effective international cooperation for urban climate mitigation governance are essential elements to achieve climate mitigation goals. The results of this research can contribute the efforts of local governments to chose the right climate mitigation policy, thereafter to have a significant investment in the process of coping against global warming.