On the 20th and 21nd of February 2025, the Social Geography and Urban Studies unit of the University of Zurich hosted a workshop with a diverse set of participants to discuss the challenges of financing climate action in Mexican municipalities. Researchers from Mexican and Swiss universities, Mexican experts, government officials, representatives from international cooperation agencies, and climate activists exchanged to define these challenges and collaborated to develop ideas on how to address them. Building on the knowledge and experience of all participants, three subject areas came into focus:

firstly, the challenge of aligning norms and legal frameworks with the necessities of the participating cities;

secondly, that of coordinating the goals and agendas of the diverse actors involved in the realisation of climate projects;

and thirdly, the challenge of the misallocation and lack of resources to finance mitigation and adaptation efforts in Mexican cities.

The discussions of these challenges yielded criteria for the successful coordination of actors and agendas for project implementation; ideas for navigation and ‘hacking’ legal frames; as well as measures for tackling financial challenges ranging from bold and fundamental structural change to more immediate ‘quick wins’. The workshop concluded with the formulation of a roadmap, in which participants committed to individual action to follow through on the ideas that were developed during these two days.