Asian Development Bank’s Sameer Kamal and Sonia Sandhu share their insights on the need to have an inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG); the connection of GHG in urban areas; and the specific challenges and opportunities in doing GHG inventories in Southeast Asia’s urban areas.

Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s Sonia Sandhu discussed the challenges and opportunities of accounting greenhouse gas emission of urban infrastructure projects, and incorporating GHG inventories into city investment planning processes. The aim of the interactive discussion is to align with ADB's commitments on climate change mitigation.

Mitigation progress cannot be measured without estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Capturing project and city emission estimates has yet to be fully mainstreamed as part of Asian Development Bank’s urban operations. Despite the challenges, there is a strong case for moving toward establishing and maintaining GHG inventories for cities in the long-term.

While the similarities of international development goals help provide comparisons across countries, there is a need for decentralized tracking as a result of differentiated challenges. The question is whether to localize or to customize these goals in the context of Asia and the Pacific.