Cambridge was fortunate to have City Councilor Henrietta Davis attend the recent United Nations conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Here is a report of her experiences:

Some have called the COP 15 meeting last month in Copenhagen “the environmental Woodstock of this generation.”  It brought together people from far and wide with high hopes and aspirations, representatives of large countries and small, some like the Maldives, fighting for their survival.

The excitement of COP 15 was evident not only at the formal conference center, but also throughout the city of Copenhagen where green messages and holiday greetings combined in (energy efficient) lights and billboards.  I was honored to attend the meeting as one member of the five-person National League of Cities delegation.

While the large—very large—international meeting focused on nations setting targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions and determining how the developed world would assist the developing nations (goals that were advanced but not quite accomplished), our NLC delegation focused on mobilizing the unique and  powerful role of local governments.

To that end we got together with leaders of cities and local communities from all around the globe. We met formally and informally with leaders of American, Canadian, Australian, Eastern and Western European cities. We were introduced to the European Union’s Municipal and Regional Commission. We spoke with city leaders from Dubrovnik and Paris and from small towns in England who all spoke passionately of how much work there is for cities to do and the help we need to do it.

At informational briefings we confirmed that we cities, towns and counties are a big part of the greenhouse gas emission problem: home to the bulk of the world’s population, we are users of a significant amount of the world’s energy.

We also confirmed that we are an essential part of the solution and that we’re already doing so much. As a Cambridge City Councilor and recent chair of the Health and Environment Committee, I am well aware of our city’s efforts and desire for U.S. and world leaders to partner with us to do even more.

Local governments like Cambridge are the organizers of significant mitigation efforts, retrofitting our local government buildings to use less energy, enacting stringent local building energy codes, planting and maintaining trees in urban forests and reducing mountains of trash through local recycling efforts.

We are the first responders when there are emergencies arising from severe weather events like heat waves, hurricanes and droughts.  And it will be up to us to adapt our cities to climate change effects such as the rise in sea level and insect pest infestations.

While the U.N badges we were issued indicated that our delegation represented a non-governmental organization (NGO), it’s important to point out that the thousands of municipalities represented through the NLC are indeed governmental.  Unlike many NGOs, we have a broad perspective that must go beyond the interests of narrow, particular solutions. I suggest that we are local government organizations (LGOs) and that we are already playing a unique and critical role in solving the worldwide problem of climate change. As government organizations, we will seek every appropriate remedy, using our authority and powers.

Indeed, like Cambridge, many U.S. local governments have already written climate action plans and have begun implementing those plans as we’ve waited for the federal government to play its part with major policies and programs such as increased CAFE standards, a national energy policy and most recently funding for Energy Efficiency Block Grants.

At the COP 15 meeting our delegation met with the U.S. State department to negotiate the critical role of cities and the need for partnerships at all levels of government: local, state, county and federal. On Tuesday, I testified along with others from U.S. cities, from ICLEI (Cities for Sustainability), from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and from NACO (National Association of Counties) to say that we want local government to be specifically mentioned in any written U.N. agreement. We are already working to prevent climate change.

In closing, the most important thing I learned in Copenhagen is that local governments and their representative organizations, such as the NLC, can and must work together within our own countries and across national boundaries to share our best practices with each other, including reaching out to cities in developing nations. No matter what happens with the U.N.’s climate accord, cities, towns and counties will continue to protect the world’s climate and its people.

There’s much more we local government organizations (LGOs) can do together. We have just begun to harness the power of LGOs−cities, towns and counties−working together.

Henrietta Davis is a Cambridge City Councilor and incoming Chair of the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the National League of Cities.  She was part of a 5-person delegation that included a Cleveland Ward Councilor and NLC staff. The NLC represents 19,000 cities and towns across the U.S.  This article is adapted from one previously published in Nation’s Cities Weekly January 11, 2010.