UK aid for sustainable cities
A review assessing UK aid’s support for sustainable cities.
Read the review
- HTML document
- PDF download (2 MB)
- Published: 23 Jul 2024
Read the literature review
- HTML document
- PDF download (690 KB)
- Published: 23 Jul 2024
Review
This review found that the UK is supporting urban development globally but needs to pay greater attention to helping countries adapt and adjust to climate change threats, alongside work to reduce emissions.
Findings
- The UK’s use of nature-based solutions – working with nature to help address environmental challenges – to help countries adapt to climate change, is limited.
- UK aid for sustainable cities pays insufficient attention to poverty reduction and using nature-based solutions is often a way to help the urban poor.
- Aid budget reductions starting in 2020 led to thinly spread sustainable cities programming and the merger between the Department for International Development and Foreign, Commonwealth Office (FCDO) fragmented the programme delivery across multiple departments, resulting in lack of coordination and hampered effectiveness.
- The government makes strong efforts to incorporate citizen voices into its city planning and engages with local stakeholders.
- The UK’s international climate finance commitments – emphasised in 2023 white paper and International Climate Finance Strategy – have been poorly communicated and lacked both clarity of purpose and appreciation of the UK’s potential strengths, such as mobilising private finance for city infrastructure investments.
- Monitoring, evaluation, learning and data collection were inconsistent, and there were no performance indicators to evaluate progress of the portfolio, making it difficult to ensure value for money.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1: The UK needs to conduct a portfolio-wide evaluation of its interventions to support sustainable cities to better understand what has been effective, both in central and country-based programming, and to assure value for money.
Recommendation 2: Following the portfolio evaluation, FCDO should convene UK departments and external partners in a collective strategic planning process for sustainable cities work.
Recommendation 3: British International Investment (BII) and the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) should develop a credible model for supporting affordable housing for people in the bottom 40% income category in any country, drawing on learning from other development finance institutions and the development capital portfolio.
Recommendation 4: The UK should better align its technical assistance in urban settings with securing private and public finance.
Recommendation 5: The UK should rebalance its investments in climate action in urban settings towards climate adaptation (relative to mitigation).
Recommendation 6: The UK should support development and investment in urban nature-based solutions (NBS) as a key solution for climate adaptation and resilience in developing countries.
Recommendation 7: The UK should develop mechanisms for seeking reimbursement, or co-finance in cash or kind, from the partner country for its technical advisory services for sustainable cities in upper- and lower-middle-income countries.