Our Activities

ICLEI is supporting the city of Turku in designing the Circular Turku roadmap with relevant stakeholders. ICLEI is advising on participation mechanisms and providing expert inputs across the priority sectors in the region. Learnings from local circular economy action in Turku are shared on the global stage for replication and knowledge sharing with other local governments.

ICLEI is working with local actors in Bogor city to identify key circular economy challenges that the Circular Jobs methodology can help address, to ensure the project yield tangible benefits at the local level. In addtion to supervising the local data gathering process and supporting the baseline analysis, ICLEI is formulating recommendations based on the results of the analysis for circular economy projects that create local jobs.

ICLEI analyzes participating cities’ policies and existing initiatives, maps and engages with stakeholders in the food system, and identifies opportunities and barriers. As the project outcome, ICLEI will publish a report to demonstrate the initiatives taken by cities in East Asia, to develop narratives of the circular food system, as well as providing policy guidance and suggestions.

ICLEI will carry out desk-based research, interviews, discussion workshops, and generate case studies in investigating the activities that have been taken by cities, and further explore the potential for improving circularity. East Asia local governments participating in the project, will be provided with systems thinking to review the initiatives taken in their food systems and further optimize them. They will also be engaged in discussions with stakeholders across the value chain to better understand the barriers and potentials of implementing circular economy approach and strategies in the food system.

ICLEI is convening a circular economy workshop to bring stakeholders and experts from African cities together. Through a combination of short presentations and interactive sessions, the workshop will (1) build shared understanding of the concepts of circular development, resource nexus and urban metabolism, as well as their application in urban African contexts; (2) familiarise participants with useful tools and portals for analysing city resource performance; (3) show evidence of these principles in action in Accra; (4) identify city needs related to urban resource management, and (5) collectively chart a way forward for building communities of practice around sustainable urban resource management in African cities.

The solutions and actions developed in CityLoops range from instruments for predicting future excavated CDW and soil production, to awareness-raising campaigns, circularity decision making support tool, simulation of impacts 3D visualisation tools and procurement guidelines for OW products. A total of ten demonstration actions will be implemented, testing over 30 new tools and processes.
A sector-wide circularity assessment and an urban circularity assessment will be carried out in each of the cities. The former will help to optimise the demonstration activities, whereas the latter will enable cities to effectively integrate circularity into planning and decision making. Another key aspect of CityLoops is circular procurement: the seven demonstrator cities will explore how public sector purchases can create markets for innovative circular economy products and solutions – from more circular design and increasing the use of recycled content in products, to ensuring reparability, reuse and appropriate recycling of products and materials, and promoting servicisation models. The active involvement of key stakeholders in every stage of the project will be also of crucial importance.

Through the Reflecting Cities project, ICLEI aims to provide African cities with spaces for reflection to assist them in engaging with the complex urban planning challenges they have identified. The project facilitates a number of exchanges to support urban planners (including representatives from national and local governments) in learning from the experiences of other cities, supported by experts. The project cities have each identified a case study of a complex planning topic with which they are currently wrestling The topics being explored include waste management, greening and traffic management. Based on the technical skills required for each case study, the project provides opportunities to engage with and learn from experts in relevant fields while benefiting from inter-city learning.

Under the Asia Regional Environmental Technology Cooperation project framework of the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (FECO), Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China, ICLEI supported FECO in conducting one Indian Environmental Industry Research Report, and two Environmental Industry Research Report Solid Waste and Wastewater Management Systems in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively.

CLEI acted as the coordinator of all activities under this service agreement with FECO, and facilitated planning and implementation of the research projects with the engagement of ICLEI South Asia and ICLEI Southeast Asia. Three research reports were prepared as deliverables of the project and submitted to FECO, as guidance documents for Chinese’s environmental enterprises endeavor to engage with the Indian environmental management market, and solid waste and wastewater management in Indonesia and the Philippines. Through this project, ICLEI supported strengthening the cooperation between local governments and the private sector in the region on environmental industry and technology, in exploring possible solutions to the challenges of sustainable development cities are facing.

ICLEI’s ‘Holistic strategy and action plan for plastic waste management in GHMC’ will act as a guideline for various stakeholders for reducing the use of plastic waste in the city with the focus of making the city single-use plastic free by 2022.

The project also includes design and implementation of a pilot project and dissemination of policy implications by developing guidelines for plastic waste management which can be used as a model case for development of state level plastic waste management policy. The experience will later be shared with central government ministries and other stakeholders to consider as a model for implementing national guidelines on plastic waste management.

With support from the Korea Environmental Corporation and the World Bank, ICLEI is supporting the cities of Dharamshala and Kullu-Manali in Himachal Pradesh in the preparation of solid waste management strategies and action plans, as a pilot to improve integrated solid waste management for the mountainous regions of Pakistan, India, and Nepal. The project supports these cities to collect data for solid waste management, conduct surveys and waste quantification and characterisation studies, and finally, provide inputs to waste management strategies for mountainous regions. In order to improve solid waste management in the region, the project aims to analyze current solid waste management in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, India and Nepal, provide suggestions on integrated strategies and models for each country, and to develop guidelines for sustainable solid waste management in the region.

ICLEI conducted Municipal Solid Waste Management Exposure Workshops for more than 100 urban local bodies and strengthened their institutional capacities towards collection, treatment, disposal and efficient management of various types and categories of waste. The project also developed training modules, identified external experts and facilitated site visits for participants from local governments. Five 3-day workshops were conducted at different locations as suggested by the National Institute of Urban Affairs. The workshops and site visits will help the municipal officials to develop an understanding of the commonly faced issues, challenges and constraints of managing municipal solid waste. The capacities of the municipal staff will be built to effectively execute municipal solid waste projects and plans as per the mandate of the revised Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.

The project analyzed current strategies for waste prevention and management and assessed how they contribute towards resilience and resource efficiency. UrbanWINS developed and tested methods for designing and implementing eco-innovative strategic plans for waste prevention and management in 8 pilot cities. The strategic plans were created in a citizen engagement process and resulted in three pilot actions in each city. As part of UrbanWINS, the CityMatch program offered staff exchanges between waste management department of different cities to create cross-regional learning and exchanges.

ICLEI supported the UrbanWINS project with activities to facilitate knowledge and experience sharing between public authorities from different parts of the project’s regions as well as to carry out mutual benchmarking exercises and evaluation; a series of webinars; an online toolkit; and news aggregation from the sector.

ICLEI developed a detailed and agile dissemination, communication and awareness plan at the beginning of the project, being periodically updated and deployed along the project life cycle (e.g. Updates of social media, website, newsletter, and other promotional opportunities, Creation of dissemination materials like leaflets, posters, templates, business cards etc.. The aim of this activity was to reach the widest possible community through various channels and instruments. Besides it helped assure alignment and synergies with other international initiatives related to plastic waste recovery solutions and technologies, and provided training for the professionals and staff working with these solutions and technologies.

The Urban Nexus project started out as a bottom-up initiative operating primarily at the city level. GIZ and ICLEI provide customized technical assistance to cities depending on the thematic focus of the cities’ nexus pilot projects. However, national, regional and provincial-level legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks are crucial determinants for local decision-making with regard to the nexus sectors. As such, ICLEI is facilitating national – regional – local dialogues as a means to clarify issues impeding the implementation of proposed nexus pilot projects. National-local dialogues help bridge the gap across levels of government particularly in the areas of water including wastewater, energy, and land use as well as cascading finance to the local level. Iteration and continued follow-ups between the two levels of government further strengthens vertical integration. ICLEI also utilizes its various international events to further promote the nexus approach including cross-sectoral cooperation within local governments and across levels of government.

ICLEI established a replicable framework that can be used by local governments throughout the country to attribute the observed changes in community GHG emissions inventories. Practitioners within cities and counties are now able to harness data to produce a more accurate depiction in changes to community-scale efficiency, communicate those trends more clearly, and use the data to evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programs. The project components are development of the Contribution Analysis methodology; application of the techniques of Contribution Analysis to a range of community types to illustrate the drivers of change in various communities; production of a “replication toolkit” which clearly describes the steps in the process, provides guidance and templates for additional communities to adopt and take forward; and distrbution of these new resources widely.