CLGF is part of the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative (CSCI) - comprising the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), the Commonwealth Planners Association (CAP), the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA), the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council (CEC) and The King’s Foundation (KF). Together, the partnership promotes a stronger focus on sustainable and inclusive urbanisation across the Commonwealth, particularly in the light of the increasing impact of climate change on urban areas. 

Building on the Commonwealth Heads of Government’s adoption of the Commonwealth Declaration on Sustainable Urbanisation in 2022, the CSCI partners are actively exploring ways of enabling more collective action towards implementation, and linking urban challenges with Commonwealth priorities.  

CSCI Action groups: approaches and outcomes  

With FCDO (UK) funding support, the partners have established three Action Groups on urban finance, housing and integrated planning, as well as an expert group on skills and capacity. CLGF leads the group on urban finance.  

Each of these groups has brought together a cross-section of actors and countries to capture key challenges and priorities and to make recommendations for action at local, national and Commonwealth levels. This has been reinforced with an extensive set of case studies reflecting different models and approaches. Multi-level governance and collaboration across sectors feature strongly as critical drivers for success across all action groups, as does the need for a focus on ensuring access to skills and capacity that are relevant for the current context.  

A full set of the papers, policy notes and case studies can be found on the CSCI website here: https://commonwealthsustainablecities.org/cscc/  

Localising the impact and next steps  

We were delighted that the project also enabled CLGF to run a dialogue with members in Madhya Pradesh, India, on multi-level and multi-sectoral collaboration in ensuring sustainable urbanisation in the State. This meeting brought together a representative group of local actors and partners whose discussions drew on the Declaration and the Action Groups, as well as existing good practice in India and the wider Commonwealth. The initiative successfully resulted in the co-creation of a matrix or roadmap for future action.  

Photo credit: © CLGF, 2026

CLGF looks forward to starting a series of webinars and events to share the outputs in more detail and to discuss their use with members, and the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Network. We are also keen to use these insights to underpin our ongoing programming.  

Please look out for the dates and times of these sessions, which will be available on our website shortly.