Cambodia is urbanizing rapidly, with nearly a quarter of its 17 million population now living in cities—a figure expected to reach 6 million by 2050. While urban growth has driven economic development and job creation, it has also intensified inequality and heightened vulnerability to climate impacts, particularly floods and extreme heat. In Phnom Penh, informal urban expansion has quadrupled the city’s footprint since the 1980s, eroding wetlands and increasing both the frequency and severity of floods. The city now experiences up to 25 heatwave days annually—five times more than surrounding rural areas—and urban areas accounted for 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.
To address these challenges, the World Bank’s City Climate Finance Gap Fund provided early-stage technical assistance between 2022 and 2023 to Phnom Penh and the national Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction. The support aimed to strengthen urban planning and integrate climate risks into long-term development strategies. Working with local stakeholders, the Gap Fund developed a customized urban planning tool that modeled spatial data and multiple development scenarios through 2050, helping officials evaluate the impacts of different policy choices on land use, energy consumption, water and waste management, public transport, emissions, and access to public services.
The Gap Fund’s analysis guided Phnom Penh in drafting a city resilience assessment, developing targeted policy recommendations, projecting emissions, estimating financing needs for key infrastructure, and updating its Green City Strategic Plan. It trained 35 municipal and national officials in scenario planning and growth modeling and strengthened coordination across ministries by establishing an inter-agency steering committee. The city’s climate-smart goals now include curbing urban sprawl, expanding public transit with 100 km of new bus routes, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40%, cutting energy consumption in residential and commuting sectors, halting increases in land surface temperatures, and increasing wetland areas. These initiatives have influenced not only local planning but also national dialogue, including the 2nd Cambodia Urban and Housing Forum and the World Bank’s Country Climate Development Report.
Encouraged by Phnom Penh’s progress, the Gap Fund extended support to seven additional cities: Battambang, Kampot, Kep, Khemarak Phoumin, Poipet, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville. Local governments received assistance in drafting climate strategies, identifying priority infrastructure investments, developing low-carbon investment portfolios, and conducting pre-feasibility studies. This early-stage support helped foster trust between government levels and built a collaborative community focused on sustainable urban development.
Through these efforts, Cambodia has laid the foundation for over US$7.6 billion in potential climate-smart urban investments. The Gap Fund’s initiatives are now feeding into the development of Cambodia’s National Urban Policy, with low-carbon investment portfolios identifying US$127.4 million in potential climate projects and training 100 government officials on climate-smart urban and spatial development. These efforts demonstrate how early-stage technical assistance can transform urban planning, strengthen resilience, and guide cities toward a greener and more sustainable future.
