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Here’s how.
California is a proud member of the Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership, co-chaired by Secretary Crowfoot.
States and provinces aren’t climate backstops, they’re climate leaders. As climate and environmental policies across the globe come under attack, groups of local and state leaders have taken the torch to prove that we don’t need permission from Washington or elsewhere to protect our people, grow our economies, and lead on climate issues.
And it’s happening through all levels of government—not just in large or federal governments—coming together from all corners of the globe to accelerate progress.
Subnational leaders—the governors, ministers, other elected officials closest to communities—are on the frontlines of climate-driven crises. At the state and provincial levels, we serve as a hub to provide continuity, spur innovation, and speed up readiness to respond to and recover from the next extreme heat wave, massive wildfire, or prolonged drought.
The Mediterranean Climate Action Partnership (MCAP) formed last year out of this momentum. MCAP is a group of subnational governments who share a similar climate and the environmental and socioeconomic conditions that come with it. Climate change hits hardest in regions that have contributed the least to the crisis, and this is especially true in Mediterranean bioregions, where rising heat, water scarcity, and ecological loss threaten lives and livelihoods.
Half a billion people worldwide live in regions with a Mediterranean climate, and each one is exposed to a common set of challenges on drought, wildfire, and extreme heat. MCAP’s members represent over 150 million people spanning 16 regions across five continents—that’s 30% of the world’s population facing Mediterranean climate risks.
The environmental, social, and economic repercussions of these risks are staggering. Each year, we collectively see billions of dollars lost to worsening extreme weather and natural disasters, countless communities—many often underserved or underrepresented—bearing the brunt of climate extremes, and entire ecosystems and species lost forever.
But there is hope. In just one year, MCAP is already transforming how subnational governments prepare for and respond to climate threats. With leaders and technical teams working across 16 regions and five continents, MCAP is scaling up solutions, aligning strategies across oceans, and moving past talk and into action by deploying new tools that are saving lives and protecting livelihoods.
By working across borders, we’re seeing progress take shape in communities across the globe. Here are just a few examples:
- In California and New South Wales, Australia, a collaboration decades in the making is already keeping more communities safer from wildfire. Fire agencies from both regions are now using new technology, called shared predictive modeling systems, to anticipate fire behavior with greater accuracy, while joint firefighter training programs are bolstering capacity in both hemispheres. These aren’t theoretical efforts. This year, coordinated fire response plans helped protect communities in both Southern California and rural New South Wales during concurrent fire events.
- To improve the safety and health of communities in California and Victoria, Australia, these jurisdictions have launched surveillance systems for early detection of climate-related illnesses like heat illness, respiratory distress from wildfire smoke, or thunderstorm asthma. The sophistication of these systems is increasing rapidly, improving knowledge of people and places most impacted, to better prevent, reduce and respond to health impacts of climate change.
- Wildfire leaders in Chile and California have developed ways to battle wildfire across the equator, including new technology that supports faster deployment of aerial and ground resources across borders. In a recent exercise, agencies from both regions successfully simulated a binational disaster response using shared tools—proof that this collaboration is ready for real-world deployment.
It’s not just about emergency response. MCAP is about action, and we are backing collaborative, innovative, science-based projects to restore some of the Mediterranean’s most threatened communities and the ecosystems that support them.
- In Western Cape, South Africa and Emilia-Romagna, Italy, MCAP partners are developing shared water management plans that take best practices from around the world and tailor them to Mediterranean bioregions, with a focus on drought resilience and agricultural recovery. These cutting-edge pilot projects are on track to launch later this year.
- Catalonia, Spain; Western Cape; and Central Greece are teaming up on to tackle drought, saline intrusion, and water degradation with nature-based and technological solutions. From installing hydraulic barriers in Catalonia’s Aiguamolls de l’Empordà to deploying floating wetlands in Western Cape’s Hartenbos estuary, these interventions protect biodiversity, enhance water quality, and support local livelihoods that will provide more effective and sustainable drought control and mitigation, benefiting both the environment and human population.
By charging ahead together and localizing solutions, we are already demonstrating how climate leadership at the subnational level delivers tangible outcomes. We are not reinventing the wheel; rather, MCAP brings leaders from across the world together to find more ways than ever before to adapt an scale proven solutions.
As we get closer to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, MCAP is showing the world how the global climate agenda must and can evolve. Subnational governments are not waiting for top-down mandates or permission. We are deploying scalable solutions now that are effective, measurable, and ready for investment.
The Partnership is coming together this week in Western Cape for our second annual convening. There’s no time to waste and we are rising up to meet the moment. Together we aim to redefine what climate leadership looks like, and to show the world that with urgency, coordination, and local power, the path to resilience is already underway.
