Why does municipal climate governance matter?
Climate change is a global issue, but its solutions are often implemented at the local level. Municipalities influence transport, buildings, land use, waste management, infrastructure, and other sectors that directly determine emission levels within communities. Therefore, local governments play a vital role in achieving regional and national climate goals.
Many Canadian municipalities have already developed climate action plans, established greenhouse gas reduction targets, and started measuring their carbon footprints. Yet an important question remains: do these commitments actually influence how municipalities make decisions? In many cases, climate plans remain separate strategic documents instead of being integrated into budgeting, infrastructure investments, and day-to-day governance.
For this reason, it is not enough to ask whether a municipality has a climate plan. A more important question is whether climate priorities are embedded in the municipality's overall governance system and reflected in everyday decision-making. This broader perspective is known as comprehensive climate action.
What does "comprehensive climate action" mean?
Comprehensive climate action entails more than just having a standalone climate plan or an emissions reduction target. It implies that climate priorities are integrated across various levels of municipal governance and influence actual decisions, resources, and responsibilities. Municipal climate actions can be considered comprehensive only when it combines strategic commitments with funding, implementation, monitoring, and accountability. This integration transforms climate plans from standalone policy documents into an integral part of day-to-day municipal governance.
Figure 1. Four dimensions of municipal climate action.
Infographic derived from: Soliz et al. (2026), Toward Comprehensive Climate Action: Assessing Mitigation Approaches Across Canadian Municipalities.
Each dimension captures a different part of municipal climate governance. Corporate and community commitments show whether municipalities have established climate goals and plans for their own operations and the wider community. Climate-informed budgeting indicates whether these priorities influence financial and investment decisions, while monitoring and reporting show whether progress is measured, communicated, and used to strengthen future action.
Methods
The study is based on an original survey of 256 Canadian municipalities conducted between July and September 2023. The survey was targeted towards municipal staff responsible for climate planning and mitigation in order to provided information on climate commitments, planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring, and reporting within their municipality. These responses were used to construct four governance indices, which served as the basis for a cluster analysis.
Figure 2. Four dimensions of comprehensive municipal climate action.
Infographic derived from: Soliz et al. (2026), Toward Comprehensive Climate Action: Assessing Mitigation Approaches Across Canadian Municipalities.
Figure 3. Six clusters of comprehensive municipal climate action.
Infographic derived from: Soliz et al. (2026), Toward Comprehensive Climate Action: Assessing Mitigation Approaches Across Canadian Municipalities.
Figure 4. Six municipal climate governance clusters: a snapshot.
Infographic derived from: Soliz et al. (2026), Toward Comprehensive Climate Action: Assessing Mitigation Approaches Across Canadian Municipalities.
Figure 5. Canada’s polarized municipal climate action landscape.
Infographic derived from: Soliz et al. (2026), Toward Comprehensive Climate Action: Assessing Mitigation Approaches Across Canadian Municipalities.
Key findings
The analysis reveals that Canadian municipalities are at very different stages of climate governance. While a small number have integrated climate priorities across planning, budgeting, implementation, and accountability, many municipalities continue to focus on only one or two dimensions. This creates an "all-or-nothing" pattern, where local governments tend to adopt either a comprehensive approach to climate governance or only isolated climate initiatives. As a result, the overall landscape of municipal climate action is highly polarized, with relatively few municipalities demonstrating truly comprehensive climate governance.
Want to learn more about comprehensive climate action? Explore the full Toward Comprehensive Climate Action article to learn how the six clusters were identified, what distinguishes their approaches, and what approaches, and what the findings mean for Canada’s progress toward its climate targets.
This article is a summary of: Aryana Soliz, Adriane MacDonald, David Talbot, Eduardo Ordonez-Ponce, Ying Zhou, Samantha Hall Linton, Amelia Clarke, Amr ElAlfy (2026). Toward Comprehensive Climate Action: Assessing Mitigation Approaches Across Canadian Municipalities.