"For cities, it's time for action, not celebration."
This is what Paris Deputy Mayor Patrick Klugman told on the sidelines of the 4th Shenzhen International Low Carbon City Forum, emphasizing that cities should lead the battle in combatting emissions, SCMP reported.
"Cities are important because they can move quicker and go further than states," Klugman said.
Signed in Paris last December, the landmark climate change deal states that 195 countries agreed to set their own emission reduction goals. This is part of the global efforts to limit the rise of temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The deal, however, will only take place if at least 55 countries will ratify it domestically.
France became the first major country to do so after ratifying the agreement on Wednesday. The Western nation joined the ranks of 17 smaller countries, which currently represent less than 1 percent of the cumulative emissions.
Klugman added that the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, an 83-member organization composed of some of the world's megacities, was "making all the commitments of the Paris agreement real before 2020," when the deal was signed last year in the French capital.
"What we are now doing in the frame of the C40 is taking the Paris agreement into action before it's taken into action by the states," the deputy mayor noted.
According to C40 Director of Regions Simon Hansen, most of the network's members are "already setting clear targets for emissions peaks or cuts, as well as laying out how those goals would be achieved," SCMP wrote.
"We are not descriptive, so we do not tell cities what their target should be . . . but we do encourage all of our member cities to have an action plan and they should set a target," Hansen said.
Hong Kong, along with six mainland cities (Shenzhen, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Dalian, Chengdu and Wuhan), is part of C40. Chinese capital Beijing and Shanghai are observers, meaning they are not obliged to hand over any information on their emissions to the network.
Hansen shared that C40 is already in talks with the two Chinese megacities to become full-pledged members of the group.
"When we expand, we would like to expand in the areas of the world where cities are growing most rapidly and where the potential to reduce carbon emissions is the highest," he said. "So I think the Chinese cities are prime examples of that."
C40 is looking forward to having Beijing and Shanghai as full members this 2016.