Cities in the global South face compounding climate risks, yet the communities most exposed to those risks often remain excluded from the governance structures and finance mechanisms designed to address them. Drawing on evidence that those closest to a problem are best positioned to identify solutions, CLARE will co-host a session at Innovate4Cities 2026, showing that vulnerable communities must be the architects of climate action to advance effective urban climate policy.

Innovate4Cities 2026 (I4C26) is taking place in Nairobi, Kenya from 21-26 June. Hosted for the first time on the African continent, this conference will bring together researchers, city leaders, practitioners, and innovators to connect climate science with the decisions shaping cities worldwide.

On 22 June, CLARE will co-convene a session at Innovate4Cities with the Movement for Community-led Development. The session will take place from 11:30 to 13:30 in Conference Room 10 around the theme “Urban resilience through inclusion: Centering marginalized communities in urban climate action through participatory governance and co-creation”.

This panel will bring together CLARE researchers working across African cities and MCLD National Association leaders to share practice-based evidence from two complementary directions. CLARE researchers will share practical lessons on how to co-create inclusive research to increase the adoption of climate solutions supporting the most vulnerable. MCLD will examine how participatory governance structures can serve as practical architecture for redirecting climate finance towards communities that have historically been bypassed by conventional investment models.

This panel will feature the following speakers from across the CLARE and MCLD communities:

• Joseph Kimani, Executive Director of SDI Kenya, representing the Tuwe Pamoja and Urban TRACs projects
• Dr. Meggan Spires, Director of Climate Change: Energy & Resilience at ICLEI Africa, representing the INACCT Resilience project
• Cathy Amenya, Programmes and Partnerships Manager of MCLD
• Felix Orwaka, Founder of UAYO

This session argues that the gap between climate ambition and climate outcomes is not primarily a technical problem. It is a governance and inclusion problem. Closing that gap requires treating community knowledge as a primary input to climate investment, not an afterthought. 

Targeting the nexus of research and action, this session is designed for a range of audiences working on urban climate resilience in the Global South, including city officials, researchers, practitioners, and more. At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Assess how current urban climate investment architectures exclude community decision-making, and name specific structural changes that would correct this.
2. Understand how to undertake equitable co-creation with different stakeholders to understand their needs, add relevance to research, and generate more effective and inclusive climate solutions.
3. Apply practice-based insights from community led climate action in African cities to their own organisational or policy contexts.

About the Movement for Community-Led Development (MCLD)

The Movement for Community-Led Development (MCLD) is a Majority World-led global network of over 3,000 grassroots organisations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, structured as a network of 25 self-governed National Associations. MCLD works to shift power, resources, and decision-making authority to grassroots organisations. Our work spans four strategic pillars: Practice, Policy, Solidarity, and Self-Reliance. MCLD’s African National Associations work across 16 countries and bring direct experience of community-led governance, participatory planning, and locally driven development in urban and peri-urban contexts.