Mining the past, inventing the future: A decade of urban climate action, and what comes next

Over the past decade, cities have built an unprecedented foundation for climate action through inventories, planning, commitments, and reporting. Initiatives like WWF's One Planet City Challenge have supported more than 380 cities in 51 countries, while platforms such as CDP-ICLEI Track and GCoM's Common Reporting Framework have helped cities turn commitments into targeted action. The challenge now is how to leverage this foundation to accelerate implementation. Rapidly evolving AI tools can help, but most are designed to mine the past: retrieving, classifying, and summarising existing plans. A real concern is emerging among practitioners: "What if we are searching for gold but only find sludge?"This session bridges two conversations. WWF and city partners will reflect on 10 years of OPCC, drawing on lessons from Latin American cities and the strategic value of standardized reporting. Building on this, we will launch a new publication on the next generation of AI tools for cities: science-based generative systems that help cities co-design interventions and identify implementation paths, featuring reflections from practitioners in Kaohsiung on a recent multi-city AI workshop.