ABSTRACT
Cities are de facto components of the global environmental governance regime. But they are not so de jure. That is to say that the incorporation of this practical role of cities into the global regime has already started at ground level, as is evident in the C40 network and the actual innovations in cities. Yet neither their weight in environmental damage production nor their specific capacities to reduce this damage have been factored directly into the formal regime. This tension between reality at ground level and high-level policymaking, mostly removed from those facts, is beginning to be unsustainable.
