Our Activities

The Connecting Nature front-runner cities will draw on their experiences and work with fast-follower cities in a capacity-building role. The project will expand upon existing urban sustainability and innovation initiatives, create a reference framework of clear and useful indicators for the implementation and evaluation of nature-based solutions, build expertise and competency in all cities for innovative urban planning, policy and solution implementation, generate economic opportunities for a diversity of urban actors in Europe, and nurture urban community support, idea creation, active stakeholder participation and idea implementation at local levels and expansion and replication at a global level, through the global reach of ICLEI. The ICLEI European Secretariat will, through its regional offices in East Asia, South Korea and Brazil, in collaboration with local partners in these regions, work on drawing down matching regional funding and establish local Connecting Nature linked initiatives that will adapt and embed mechanisms for the co-production of solutions in those locations and cities.

ICLEI East Asia serves as the Secretariat of EACAC, providing a long-term cooperation platform for East Asian cities committed to tackling air pollution through city-to-city exchange and collaboration.
The main activities of EACAC include: 1) (co)organizing forums, workshops and study trips for capacity building; 2) facilitating participants' engagement; 3) compiling case studies on East Asian cities’ air quality management; and 4) mobilizing resources for future development of the program and its member cities.
Under EACAC, ICLEI East Asia has provided the seed funding of the research project “Green Lung” in Ulaanbaatar (2017-2019), which promotes urban greening as a means to improve air quality in the city. ICLEI East Asia has also supported the Beijing Bureau of Ecology and Environment in strengthening its capacity on international cooperation (2018-2019), and deliver a bilateral research between Beijing and Seoul (2019-), focusing on the comparison of the two cities’ policies on the replacement of outdated boilers, vehicle control, fugitive dust management and seasonal control measures.

>> See also project description.
ICLEI organizes five strategic workshops for the network members on four thematic vision clusters (future proof, 100% renewable, zero waste, human scale) and on the organization of an EGCA laureate year.
Develops a set of well-structured toolkits, combining print and online resources that inspire cities to embark on or further advance local sustainability transitions.
ICLEI also assesses a potential enlargement of membership of the Network of the European Green Capitals as well as provides recommendations for the inclusion of and/ or increased collaboration with other networks.
ICLEI further promotes the European Green Capital Network and highlights the benefits of sharing the inspiration through the dissemination of the latest information on the project developments and the toolkits to at least 150 other ‘target cities’.

ICLEI is in the consortium to provide technical assistance on business modeling and stakeholder engagement. Under the project, ICLEI has recruited a local staff in Ulaanbaatar to carry out workshops and consultation meetings and surveys with households and homeowner associations, wisely utilize resources and knowledge from the TAP program, and structure business models on the basis of the knowledge of local energy politics and financial deadlocks.
Through the project, Ulaanbaatar City Government and the consortium will co-develop a feasible financial solution and a reasonable technical scope to kick-off precast residential retrofitting systems thinking. It is estimated that building retrofits can reduce 49-52% energy loss compared to the business-as-usual scenario and significantly contribute to Mongolia’s INDC target and enhance citizens’ living quality.

ICLEI is working with Google in order to solicit nonprofit project proposals – exact allocation of funds provided by Google.org would likely range from $100K to $500K per organization; evaluate and select projects to fund with Google input and potential input from local governments; work with the EIE team understand the potential use cases for the data; potentially play a role in monitoring outcomes, capturing insights, and surfacing those insights and examples to other cities; potentially provide capacity building support to selected nonprofits to help them effectively implement their projects. The selected organizations will use EIE to inform and action plan – This could mean more data-driven / tech organizations can help a city integrate new data sources into planning, develop analyses or projections, or model out effects of various actions; and implement actions that help them achieve a goal set using EIE – This may include
awareness building (i.e. getting a specific community out of cars and onto bicycles), volunteering to install solar panels.

ICLEI is gathering information and quantifying the climate impact of options to allow people to make better lifestyle choices aligned to a 1.5 degree scenario. We are doing this by estimating the average carbon footprint of middle class Capetonians, and estimating the carbon reduction impact of various lifestyle choices. This will help to bring to the fore practical actions that citizens and local governments can take to reduce carbon emissions.

ICLEI provides the capacity of the second key expert and two non-key experts who conduct the following activities:
1) Provide latest information, methodologies, tools, knowledge and skills that support local governments’ projects and policies at all stages of planning and implementation.
2) Support knowledge sharing and exchange of best practices between the Korean and EU cities.
3) Support policy dialogue events and meetings specifically in relation to topics related to sustainable urban development
4) Compile case studies and related stakeholder profiles
The project activity includes establishment of a digital platform, in which EU and Korean nonstate actors can join, share and accelerate climate action. It is expected that exchanging best practices and matching needs through the joint platform will increase the replication of successes, avoid repetition of failures, and generally lead to more ambitious and impactful climate actions.

ICLEI is in particular involved in Replication-Exploitation and Dissemination-Stakeholder Engagement tasks. In order to identify additional markets, feasibility studies will be performed to replicate the concept in specific contexts such as Emergency and Reconstruction sites. Specific business model to foster the commercialization of the FC gensets will be developed also through the commitment of industrial stakeholders and local authorities, who will interact with the consortium through webinars and workshops. In order to foster project replication, EVERYWH2ERE will involve industrial and public stakeholders alike from early on in the project within two dedicated Interest Groups. ICLEI will be leading the regions and cities interest group to promote project replication, the deployment of gensets and advancing urban hydrogen agendas. The presence of ICLEI, will guarantee a strong interaction with EU local authorities which play a fundamental role for the promotion of these technologies through specific policy and regulatory schemes.

ICLEI will publish policy guide for upscaling the use of hydrogen gensets in European cities.

ICLEI leads EXCESS’ communications and dissemination work package as well as specific replication activities with the aim of raising awareness of the benefits of PEBs, engaging industry and the public sector and roll out rapid replication of PEBs in Europe. The additional role of ICLEI in the project is to assess the proliferation of Plus Energy Buildings across the EU, by means of stock taking, interviews and statistical analyses.

This proposal outlines a mechanism that could offer comprehensive support and a replicable approach that could be applied globally to assist local and regional governments to develop robust and transformative projects, and to help them to navigate in the complex world of technical and financial options, meet in person potential partners, and so contributing to close the above described gap between supply and demand.

New guidance enables U.S. cities and counties to include forests and trees within their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting, a key activity to ensure representation of local forestry and land use consideration in climate action planning. Developed in partnership with the Woods Hole Research Center and World Resources Institute (WRI), and funded by Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Forest and Land Use Appendix to ICLEI’s U.S. Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions will help fill a critical gap in enabling communities to develop climate action related to land management at a local level.

As the frequency and intensity of climate change related disasters increase, local communities are severely impacted. In response to recent climate related disasters on the continent, ICLEI Africa is stepping up to support cities in reducing their disaster risk. We draw on two decades of on-the-ground work in Africa, building and strengthening resilience through proactive planning.

ICLEI has supported Fórum CB27 since its creation in 2012, and, in 2017, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation invited ICLEI to contribute to the institutional strengthening of the group through a strategic planning process and regular facilitation of CB27 meetings. ICLEI’s mission is directly connected to the Forum’s activities, in that it seeks to connect cities and local governments dedicated to sustainable development.
As a strategic partner of CB27, ICLEI supports its planning, content curation and meeting preparation, communication strategies, advocacy cooperation, and operation of the Executive Secretariat of the Forum, as well as actively participates in meetings and activites and coordinates advocacy strategies.

Through the Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL) project, local governments in sub-Saharan Africa adopt a model of inclusive climate research and action, effectively bridging the divide between science and policy by responding to city identified challenges with the co-development of relevant climate information. The targeted Southern African local governments participate in city consultations – called Learning Labs – to facilitate knowledge sharing and generation, learning, networking and policy advice. The cities are also exposed to training (at political and technical levels), partnership development and co-production of robust and scale relevant climate information. FRACTAL has established new methodologies for improved collaboration and innovative transdisciplinary research by integrating across disciplines, nations, sectors, and between academia and society. This collaboration is rooted in Africa through effective partnerships between individuals and organisations, and between participants in Africa and elsewhere. This new approach to fundamental climate research is strongly framed by the information needs required for context relevant African societal decisions.

While many island urban settlements are growing rapidly, climate change and increasingly frequent disasters are stressing urban systems. ICLEI promotes sustainable island and urban development through resilience and systems planning, clean energy, coastal fisheries management, infrastructure, innovative finance, ecosystems services, post disaster recovery and sustainable tourism. ICLEI collaborates with Mayors and leaders, through twinning of island cities with other cities and regions, to create fruitful partnerships to deliver scalable solutions to build resilience on islands and globally.