Climate Action in Buenos Aires: Strengthening Governance and Exploring Climate Budgeting for Sustainable Impact

The City of Buenos Aires (CABA) is taking bold steps to embed climate priorities into its public finance system. This Capstone project supported this transition by co-developing a climate budgeting framework aligned with CABA’s Climate Action Plan 2050, built on three pillars: mitigation, adaptation, and equity. To design a context-sensitive and implementable framework, the team conducted in-person fieldwork and engaged with key city institutions—including the Ministries of Finance and Environment and the Climate Change Cabinet—and consulted external experts and networks, including the C40 Cities initiative and representatives from peer cities. The team complemented this with a comparative analysis of climate budgeting models in Oslo, New York City, Montreal, and Rio de Janeiro, identifying best practices tailored to CABA’s governance and fiscal capacity.

The deliverables included a phased roadmap, labeling methodology, climate indicator framework, climate scorecard, facilitation tools, and communication strategy. These were refined through iterative feedback from municipal counterparts in CABA to ensure usability and alignment with institutional priorities. Rather than proposing an abstract model, the framework enables CABA to take practical first steps. It begins with labeling climate-related projects focused on mitigation and using qualitative criteria suited to current resource and data constraints. The approach is designed to evolve—eventually expanding to include adaptation and equity—while building long-term institutional capacity. This project offers a realistic pathway for CABA to institutionalize climate accountability through its budget process, laying the groundwork for city-wide ownership of climate goals and transparent allocation of public resources in the proposed two-year early-stage, mid-stage, and five-year advanced-stage timelines.