Our Activities

ICLEI USA provided technical advisory services at the request of the Climate Smart citizen task force of Philipstown New York. ICLEI contributed to the development of a baseline estimate for "net" GHG emissions after removals. The object of the analysis was to inform the development of a Climate Action Plan to outline the policies and actions local government, community partners, and individuals could take to measurably reduce emissions and adapt to unavoidable climate change. The task force recommended that the Town adopt the analysis given that it best localizes the global emissions resulting from the community’s actions and unites efforts to promote community health, a growing local economy, environmental stewardship and other sustainability initiatives under the common banner of a collective plan to address climate change. The town set a goal of carbon neutrality by 2040 and explored opportunities to do that with and without the purchase of carbon offsets.

ICLEI USA partnered with Azavea, a beneficial corporation and software developer in Philadelphia and Dr. Missy Stultz, a former ICLEI USA staff member to create TEMPERATE to help local governments with limited resources to develop climate change adaptation plans and align those plans with the reporting requirements of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. The Temperate dashboard displays city-specific potential future climate hazards, based on the geographic regions and findings included in the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Each Top Hazard is backed by one of the Climate indicators available in the Azavea Climate API, informed by Dr. Stultz's research. ICLEI USA provides 2-6 hours of Temperate support to its members. ICLEI USA contracts with cities that wish to outsource the Vulnerability Assessment development, as was the case with the Town and Village of New Paltz New York. Over a two-year period, ICLEI USA staff worked with the Town and stakeholders to develop an action plan to address local climate vulnerabilities.

ICLEI annually provided the following services:
Support local sustainability efforts in 10 cities and towns in Rhineland-Palatinate;
Organize 3 training workshops with varying topics for municipal staff and local civil society groups;
Share relevant knowledge and best practice through a newsletter and website;
Advise the Ministry of Economics on strategic matters of local sustainability transition

Within the project, ICLEI Europe was rersponsible for:
– a preliminary meta study on the multitude of campaigns and networks of the urban, peri-urban and rural endeavours for sustainability and climate change on the European level;
– managing and co-ordinating large cross-case studies in the European regions
– analysing the field research data and merging it with data on European regions

ICLEI led a consortium of partners, which developed the Berliner Nachhaltigkeitsprofil on behalf of the city. The main tasks in the project were:
Coordination of the activities of the project consortium;
Advise the city administration on strategic questions regarding local sustainability strategies;
Analyze key strategic documents of urban development in the city in order to identify cross-cutting approaches;
Conduct interviews with selected experts and individuals regarding sustainability in Berlin;
Identify three unique pathways to sustainability in Berlin. Those so called profile areas are the Enabling Berlin, the Productive Berlin, the Accessible Berlin;
Identify lighthouse projects to illustrate and showcase the previously identified profile areas;
Organize feedback loops for the development of the Berliner Nachhaltigkeitsprofil. Those are 1) a scientific advisory council, 2) a online consultation process, 3) a workshop with key stakeholders;
Create a publication package including a detailed final report, a short summary (German/ English) and a power point presentation (German/ English).

With the main topic 'Urban Sustainability' the ETC-ULS Action plan 2020 forsees the following tasks for ICLEI:
Support for the finalisation and publication of a study
Supporting integrated urban sustainability management:
– Finalisation of the publication of Urban SDG indicatiors
– Distilling good practice examples that illustrate innovative governance approaches of cities and urban areas to implement the SDGs.
Stakeholder meeting.

ICLEI was responsible for the integration of five “reference cities” invited to take part in the Berliner Mobilitätskonferenz (Berlin Mobility Conference): Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Moscow and Paris.
ICLEI identified suitable projects/initiatives from each of the five cities that could fit well into the envisaged conference programme. Further ICLEI led the communication with these cities in the run-up to the event to confirm their participation, brief them, and ensure a high-quality, relevant presentation is delivered at the conference.

ICLEI is compiling a guidance document for "Buying Social". It provides guidance for procurers on how to include socially responsible considerations in their tenders. The European Commission will publish the final guidance document. To develop the guidance ICLEI is also compiling a range of good practice examples to illustrate the guidance provided.

In order for national and local governments to better appreciate the need for safe walking and cycling facilities, Africa’s urban citizens need to challenge the widely held assumption that they all wish to drive cars by showing their support for walking and cycling. Various local initiatives around the continent (such as car-free days, place making, Open Streets, Critical Mass etc.) are inspiring citizens to reimagine and reinvent their streets to be accessible for all. African Mobility Month aims to celebrate these and other activities to raise the priority of walking and cycling in the continent’s development agenda.

The ICLEI EcoLogistics Community is the first city network globally committed to a sustainable urban freight future. The Community leads sustainable urban freight development in participating cities and drive global actions in the international stage through collaborative exchange and action plans and stakeholder engagements. Cities benefit from being part of the Community through the shared knowledge and resources made available to the network, as well as opportunities to disseminate their successes.

>> 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’.

Mitigating the impacts of climate change in the relevant sectors, with the preparation of a technical study of climate risk and the respective adaptation plan through the MOVE platform; Promote actions and measures to control and reduce GHG emissions by updating the GHG Inventory using the CLIMAS software and the GPC methodology; Establish paths to reach the commitment to neutralize GHG emissions by 2050 through an assessment of the best alternatives for reducing emissions in the sectors of the municipality; Share technology and information with the local technical staff to empower the municipality in implementing the proposed actions; Encourage public and private investments to adopt sustainable practices; Create a database for monitoring and supervising measures and for accelerating more ambitious, collaborative and environmentally correct local climate actions. Expected impacts: to position an ICLEI and C40 member city in accordance with the GCoM through the presentation of a historic series of GHG Inventory, dissemination of the study through the final report of the plan as an opportunity for international visibility

The event was organized by ICLEI SAMS in partnership with Secretariat for Infrastructure and Environment of , Regions4, Post 2020 Biodiversity Framework – EU Support initiative, the support of CETESB, Fundação Florestal, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve (RBMA), the envolvement of ICLEI Africa and Cities Biodiversity Centre representation. The event aimed to formulate contributions from several Brazilian actors regarding key points for the new Post-2020 global framework of the Biological Diversity Convention (CBD), which will be defined in the next COP15 of CBD. To this end, the “Letter of São Paulo” was prepared as a result of the event, as a document that compiled the local, subnational contributions, from the biosphere reserves, civil society entities, from the private sector, among others. With this, the intention is to reach a global agreement for nature and for people to be recognized by the 196 signatory countries to the Convention. The event featured moments of group work in sessions with some thematic axes and also expository moments of practices on these themes.

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 will work on the Communication, outreach and inter-project collaboration and engagement area, which includes: Support to project communication (incl. communication strategy, 4 fact sheets, 4 policy briefs, 4 webinars, other specific events and presentations); Organisation and moderation of 4 city workshops and Organisation and moderation of 2 stakeholder workshops and one conference (incl. development of programme). These activities will help to ground the policy discussion, enable learning and develop targeted and operational recommendations for policy makers, practitioners, potential investors, and other relevant actors within and outside of the study regions to improve the design and implementation of GBI and highlight opportunities in creating markets for innovative solutions.

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.

ICLEI KO is connecting this national & local event with global issues and trends. KO helps the co-organizer and hosting city see and know what front-running country and cities are doing at similar events and efforts. SDGs Studio that was introduced in the Global SDGs Festival took place in Bonn in May 2019 was replicated at KFSD. KO’s role is bringing new ideas and innovation from global society to this festival that has been long-lasting since 1999.

ICLEI is providing a platform for inspiration, action and the commitment to take sustainability to the next level.

In nearly three decades of work, ICLEI has developed, tested and scaled up methodologies to guide the way towards sustainable urban development at the local level. This rich experience accumulated allows us to apply a common framework for our global projects and initiatives, which currently follows the stages: analysis, action and acceleration, and in each one follows a step-by-step guideline. This track can be applied to a variety of themes – from low emission to nature-based development – and promotes a cyclical path that allows the continuous improvement of the governments in our Network. This year’s “Cities + Sustainable – ICLEI South America Solutions Portfolio” highlights the following opportunities and initiatives ICLEI provides cities and regions in South America.

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 Innovation will select teams, startups, products, services and innovative processes in the segment of afforestation or urban green areas, which strengthen the management and sustainability of cities, promote green spaces, adopt solutions based on nature and generate measurable management results municipal public health. Through a public announcement inviting organizations for proposal submissiton, ICLEI will select 10 best proposals and start a mentoring process with the selected ones through the online traction e-learning platform and the growth path methodology. This project is expected to collect innovative and sustainable solutions to the challenges brought by local and regional governments.

The objective of the Forum is to create a regional platform of municipal governments, specifically through its Planning or Development Secretaries, to promote the exchange of knowledge, practices and models of sustainable development between Amazonian subnational governments and the subsequent dissemination of experiences at regional level. The network acts as a cooperation mechanism to position Amazonian cities as global references for sustainable urban development in a context of tropical forests, in which managers collaborate mutually in the implementation of monitoring measures and efforts to reach the SDGs. ICLEI is responsible for (i) the identification of potential cities for involvement with the network in the first year, (ii) the definition and implementation of connection and exchange mechanisms for the group, for permanent dialogue and mobilization with members, and for (iii) regional meetings to build an agenda for cooperation between local governments, the active exchange of experiences and the position of cities as drivers of sustainable urban development.

ICLEI KO is working as the secretariat of the alliance coordinating the overall plan of the activities of the alliance and the implementation on the ground. Aside from administrative role, KO provides professional consultation and guidance on how local leaders show their wills on sustainable development and how the local government officials can apply the concept and philosophy of sustainable development into their administrative works and policies.

ICLEI is responsible for several activities: Disseminate, communicate and exploit project results; Standardisation activities; Establish and maintain a framework to enable co-creation between research partners and city partners; Develop ‘state-of-the-art’ report on mainstreaming gender in building cultural heritage resilience; Review, map and characterise good practices Europe-wide in regard to making historic areas more resilient. This will be achieved by working with the pilot cities Bratislava (Slovakia), Camerino (Italy), Hamburg (Germany), and Valencia (Spain) to develop tools and methodologies that will be combined into a collaborative disaster risk management platform for local authorities and practitioners, the urban population, and (inter)national expert communities. These efforts will ensure project results that are applicable and useful in practice, supporting informed decision-making by local government leaders and technical staff, with a view to better protecting cultural heritage assets from climate impacts and other disasters.

ICLEI was responsible on international policy processes. Through desk research, interviews and direct participation, ICLEI identified relevant political dynamics and processes regarding the rural-urban nexus in the context of HABITAT III (preparation and implementation) and the implementation of the SDGs. The aim is to identify ways through which the German federal government, and especially the Ministry for Environment and Building, can influence these processes in order to foster a global sustainable rural-urban nexus.
Part of the problem is that there is a limited understanding of the interconnections and hence development potential between urban and peri-urban areas due to an insufficient data base and lack of suitable indicators. That's why ICLEI collected fitting indicators out of a pool of (inter)national indicator sets and – in a second step – developed relevant indicators where needed. The indicators developed in the RUN project can serve as a starting point to better un-derstand these linkages and identify the most relevant data needed.

The Monitor Nachhaltige Kommune project aims to support the development of "effect-oriented" sustainability management in German communities. The project, lead by the Bertelsmann Foundation, is divided into several project modules. ICLEI´s part in this project builds the foundation of indicator based monitoring. It provides the knowledge and training for local governments to change their governance instruments with the aim of becoming more sustainable.
Within this framework ICLEI developed a governance self assessment tool for local governments, developed hand books for urban sustainability governance
and was further responsible for the coaching of local governments in implementing new governance approaches.
ICLEI also takes part in the strategic advisory council of the overall project.

Promoting the project and its results among multiple beneficiaries is an important goal of the project. ICLEI therefor develops, implements, and monitors a detailed strategy for communication, dissemination, and exploitation. ICLEI will thereby safeguard the implementation and replication of developed solutions beyond the project’s lifetime. ICLEI will further develop a typology of city types that recognises different contexts.

ICLEI Europes task within this activity is to validate, enrich and share SONNET results, maximising their exploitation and impact, drawing upon a well-designed knowledge brokerage and co-creation process within and beyond the project. It implements cutting edge dissemination processes to maximize SONNET’s impact by engaging a variety of key stakeholders at local, regional, national and European levels, drawing on insights derived from the different workpackages. SONNET utilizes multiple channels and formats (incl. social media, regional workshops, briefs for practitioners,
infographics, videos) to disseminate its findings to all relevant stakeholders.
Specific objectives of ICLEI Europe are:
– Coordination of the co-creation and dissemination process
– Translating SONNET’s results into actionable recommendations for policy makers
– Development and dissemination of novel and cutting-edge scientific knowledge

ICLEI builds four Heritage Innovation Partnerships (HIPs). Each convened by a local partner and involving stakeholders from a range of organisations, including conservation organisations, community groups, local businesses engaged working alongside the research teams. The HIPs provide input into the development, analysis and outputs of the project.
ICLEI further produces a final report on the value added and use of HIPs to advance the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage.
In addition, ICLEI leads the Peer-Review Process among the four partnerships for overcoming existing problems, by building an understanding of the issues, situations and challenges and exploring new ideas, options and solutions. To enhance knowledge exchange between partnerships, city visits are set up. The fvisits aim to facilitate the transfer knowledge especially for what concerns decision making, implementation, governance, business models and advance the exploration of adaptive re-use of cultural heritage.
Finally ICLEI will be responsible for the overall coordination of all implementation and review activities and takes a role as ‘external coach’ for each implementing partnership.

ICLEI leads the dissemination and communication. In this context a plan is delivered responding to the particularities of the rural areas, that are often “hard to reach” and both physically and technologically remote. The team engages with national and local independent production companies for television and radio broadcasts as internet use may not be available or widespread in all rural communities.
Furthermore, ICLEI supports local partners in developing their local plans through capacity building, including one local communication workshop and one local communication webinar to provide additional training.
ICLEI, together with UNESCO, enhances the link between RURITAGE and a wider community of interested parties at global level based in the mandate of sustainable development and performed by their networks. More precisely, ICLEI supports the cooperation with the countries covered by the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) by identifying key conferences and events where the RURITAGE Replication Tool Box can be disseminated.
Finally, ICLEI hosts a Dialogue Breakfast with European policy-makers in Brussels using the ICLEI Breakfast@Sustainability series.

ICLEI leads the general dissemination effort of OpenHeritage, with a particular focus on reaching out to local authorities all over Europe, leveraging its vast municipality network with the policy and academia connections of the consortium as a whole.
ICLEI also contributes to the Observatory Cases, and to the Cooperative Heritage Labs, collecting and synthesizing information.

ICLEI coordinates the work on a comprehensive Outreach, Communication and Training Strategy for the ROBUST project. The strategy comprises training material for decision-makers in policy and the public sector. The specific objectives are:
To facilitate an effective communication and exchange with ROBUST’s principle target groups: 1) regional rural and urban policymakers, interest groups, and practitioners; 2) European and national policymakers, interest groups, and the general public; and 3) the research and scientific community.
To strengthen the communication and dissemination components of all WPs through common principles and a professional planning and implementation of all related activities.
To support all outreach, communication and dissemination through an interactive project website with Live Case Studies and a publication library.
To ensure a high quality of all project results and support related communications, as well as produce training modules for widespread dissemination and exploitation of ROBUST’s findings.

The Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa supports Sub-Saharan African cities to tackle the interconnected challenges of climate change and access to sustainable energy. Started in 2015, CoM SSA is the African regional chapter of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM), the largest network of cities driving urban climate action.
CoM SSA provides broad-scale technical support to signatory cities through a Technical Helpdesk housed at ICLEI Africa, in Cape Town. At least 25 of these cities are provided with tailored technical support to develop and implement Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SEACAPs).
As the initiative matures, the focus moves from planning to implementation and more specifically on unlocking climate finance at the local level. Implementing partners facilitate dialogue with private sector and finance institutions, link signatory cities with relevant initiatives for funding, facilitate inter-government dialogue on climate finance and co-ordinate action between international commitments, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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.

ICLEI created a facilitated multi-month training and capacity building program; the “Cohort” to build local government capacity in climate, resilience, forestry, and equity. Each cohort is theme-based and includes up to 20 participant local governments, some of whom are supported by university student externs. Cohort participants are supported by ICLEI USA technical advisors, the ICLEI USA online learning platform, recorded training content, and one-on-one support as needed. Topics have included the GHG net-zero building strategies, GHG inventories as a first step toward identifying a reduction target and priority strategies to reduce emissions; integrated climate action and resilience plans, and equitable community engagement. Cohort partners have included the Global Covenant of Mayors, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, Mountain Towns 2030, California Statewide Energy Efficiency Collaborative, the University of Northern Iowa, and the State of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Climate Action and Adaptation Plan Training: ICLEI provided in-person training for Los Angeles City staff on Climate Action Planning. The training focused on the following topics:
•Climate equity and community driven processes;
•5 Milestone Process: Data Driven Planning;
•Inventory: what sectors are usually measured, what it can tell you, determining trends; emissions forecasting and emissions reduction planning;
•Vulnerability assessment: criteria to consider, sectors, ranking; ensuring relevance by including the correct stakeholders (e.g., community members); place-based, model-informed, expert-driven, transparent;
•Best practices in the process and structure; and
•Action monitoring and report.

In 2011 ICLEI Africa launched the inaugral Local Climate Solutions for Africa. It brings together key national, subnational, local government and private sector leaders from across Africa to discuss and explore collective solutions for addressing climate related challenges that threaten to derail sustainable development in Africa.

The 2020 theme “Financing for Change” will respond to the growing acknowledgement worldwide that to tackle climate change, city-scale finance must be mobilised. Local finance will give subnational actors access to the resources they need to harness the emission reduction potential in cities, and to respond effectively to climate change at the local level. Improved multi-level governance and increased finance flow to the local level will speed up implementation of current national and international climate change commitments.

•Conduct Sustainability Assessment of Existing Programs
•Develop Sustainability Baseline Assessment and Gaps
•Set Sustainability Goals
•Develop the Sustainability Plan
•Implement the Plan and Monitor Program
•Develop Sustainability Work Program Document
•Engage the Public, City Council, and Other Stakeholders

This research will take place over five semi-concurrent phases:
1. Literature analysis undertaken by researchers to understand existing and previous research topics and approaches.
2. Initial engagement & interviews in each city using narrative collection and documentation, and photographic expression to explore food production, processing, and distribution systems.
3. Co-production around food and social infrastructures will be undertaken at a workshop in which narratives will be presented, and stakeholders will be invited to co-produce theory about their food systems based on these findings and their experience.
4. Visualising socio-technical infrastructures using photographic expression.
5. The second workshop will expand the co-production of theory from food to other infrastructure systems, based on the outcomes of phase 2, the continued research of phase 1, and phase 3’s community-produced expressions, and express how this theory supports future development imaginaries and planning.

ICLEI connects like-minded cities to exchange experiences and lessons learned on the way towards the circular economy, advocates the necessity of closing-the-loop thinking, identifies cities’ circular good practices, shares the latest knowledge and provides suggestions on mainstreaming the circular development in urban strategic planning and policies.
ICLEI raises the attention on the circular development in cities and encourages multi-stakeholders dialogues by facilitating peer-learning and exchange. ICLEI pairs up like-minded cities and supports organizing on-site visits, workshops and offline meetings (whenever resources available), and distributes newsletters to feature good practices, innovation, and latest reports.
Through the Coalition, local governments from Europe and East Asia are increasingly recognizing the circular development concept as a potential approach to achieve mutual-benefits, and are gradually shifting their mindsets from the end-of-pipe treatment of waste towards closed-loop thinking. This mindset change can have a positive influence on local governments’ actions to achieve zero-carbon society and the SDGs. Cities can further review, synergize and optimize existing policies and strategies via the lenses of circularity and life-cycle management.

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.

ICLEI works in collaboration with FAO, ICLEI, RUAF and C40 to collectively promote and support subnational take-up and engagement regarding food policy and action in African cities, in line with global targets and ambitions articulated in SDG 2 and through initiatives such as the Milan Food Pact. This collaboration is also intended to build on the existing ICLEI-RUAF CITYFOOD Network and related initiatives of all the partners in Africa.

Local and regional governments can have a tremendous impact on city-region food systems, yet many decision makers are unaware of the leverage subnational governents have over their food systems. ICLEI highlights the role local and regional governments can play in improving sustainable and resilient food systems to raise awareness among key stakeholders and partners. ICLEI develops knowledge materials to advance understanding of, and to advocate for, sustainable food systems while promoting local government’s actions on this field.

ICLEI worked with partners to organize the Low-Carbon City 2.0 Professional Series Workshops and The International Conference on Mitigation Strategies for Green Transformation in Cities. International experts from Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia were invited to give a series of trainings on decarbonizing actions, urban energy efficiency improvement and low-carbon transformation featuring case studies in East Asia cities and the world. The in-depth discussions between local officers and international experts enhanced the sense of responsibility of carbon reduction in various departments, and promoted the role of local governments in changing from “regulation” to the supporting multi-stakeholders in the new climate and low carbon regime.

ICLEI initiated this partnership to attract the attention of ambitious local governments in South Korea and give them a platform to share their efforts and accomplishments on the targets of Goal 11.

ICLEI is gathering the efforts of Local Governments in South Korea on implementing SDGs and delivering related projects to leverage the effectiveness of the dispersed efforts and actions by combining and reporting them on the UN SDGs Knowledge Platform. By focusing this initiative on Goal 11, ICLEI provides the map of the implementation of Goal 11 in South Korea, and highlights leading local governments to inspire others to join.

ICLEI and the SCBD collaborated in preliminary consultations with Parties and selected subnational and local authorities on the need for implementation of NBSAPs by subnational governments. ICLEIwas tasked with guidelines for an integrated approach in the development and implementation of national, subnational and local biodiversity strategies and action plan and undertake capacity development.

The Guidelines provide detailed and comprehensive guidance on thirteen general areas for action to promote integration, coordination and cooperation, applicable to national, subnational and local levels of government. To develop the guidelines, ICLEI consulted with selected national and subnational governments; developed comparative analysis of their biodiversity strategies and action plans; presentated of the draft guidelines at CBD COP 13; and led capacity building workshops in Africa and India.

ICLEI supports the Indian national government in implementing the National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana Scheme in order to bring together urban planning, economic growth and heritage conservation.

ICLEI is bringing global practices to Indian cities and providing greater access to technical expertise, knowledge exchange and materialise climate and people-friendly mobility in cities.

ICLEI co-organizes the Human City Forum, which is hosted by Suwon City, in close cooperation with partner institutions and organizations based in Suwon. The forum aims to leverage the collective local actions for recovering human value in urban space. ICLEI mobilizes speakers from around the world and addressing the importance of the agenda in relation to SDG Goal 11, so that local governments in South Korea get unique insights on global trends on inclusive society and development.

ICLEI cohosted this side event “Social Innovations and Civic Engagement—City as Living Lab” at the 2019 Smart City Summit and Expo, Taipei. Participants from local governments learned about the smart city model of inclusive, ambitious climate action, mainstreaming public participation development strategies and creating new local leaders. Additionally, the event discussed how to test new ideas and co-create effective solutions in a Living Lab using agile methodologies. From idea identification to conceptualization and from rapid prototyping to testing, combining the Living Lab way of working and citizen engagement in a learning-by-doing approach shows great promise for inclusive city development.

ICLEI Oceania has posted a ‘science communications toolkit’ on the website, a collation of useful resources for sustainability students. Through the Young Writers Network students and graduates are empowered to become engaging communicators. Sharing evidence-based knowledge in credible and persuasive ways is paramount to the health of a mindful and engaged society, and is a prerequisite for sustainable development policies at all levels of government, especially local and regional governments, who interface most closely with communities. Through capacity building, and offering online resources and social networking events in partnership with other sustainability organisations in Melbourne, Australia, ICLEI is assisting academic researchers in translating their sustainability research into practice. ICLEI is assisting researchers and students in translating their sustainability research into practice.

Building Resilience and Adaptation Capacity (BRACE) bridges the gap between tools and information and their successful application in meaningful and influential decision making processes. ICLEI held a series of workshops throughout Manitoba on barriers and opportunities to advance climate adaptation action throughout the Province. These high impact consultation and engagement workshops targeted decision makers and stakeholders in four key sectors: 1) Indigenous and northern communities, organizations, 2) Business sector organizations, 3) Municipal communities or regions and watershed planning organizations, and 4) Infrastructure decision makers and organizations.

ICLEI works with local governments in Chinese Taipei to raise the awareness of SDGs through particularly SDG 11 – sustainable cities and communities -, and provide capacity building on policies of sustainable and healthy cities.

Information available to urban planners – such as applicable legal frameworks and relevant policies – are useful to citizens, providing them with a better insight into the planning process and local government decision making. ICLEI is exploring how to use social media and other ICT solutions for better public participation and urban co-creation, and develop new applications together with 3 major European cities. ICLEI will give citizens access to data about their city in an easy to understand way, enabling them to better support the decision-making process.

Innovative research has been undertaken by ICLEI in Blantyre, Gaborone and Harare to enhance understanding of the influence of people’s perceptions and values during their interpretation of climate risk narratives.

ICLEI develops procurement guidance including criteria and verfication schemes that consider social responsibility throughout the whole supply-chain of ICT products. Additionally, ICLEI is pilot testing procurement criteria with public authorities and consulting with manufacturers and suppliers of ICT through the Market Engagement series. ICLEI’s ‘Meet the Buyer’ event series brings buyers and suppliers of ICT together to discuss public procurement’s needs for fair labour conditions along ICT hardware supply chains and how suppliers can respond to this demand.

ICLEI works to make ICT Fair improving the lives of workers and those impacted along different stages of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supply chain through research, campaigning, capacity building and advocacy.

Drawing on various research projects, ICLEI aims to make research work for local sustainability at the European level. ICLEI works to bridge the gap between research, policy-making and action in sustainable development, at and for the local level. ICLEI organizes knowledge brokerage between local governments and other stakeholder groups such as researchers, civil society initiatives, start-ups etc.

The PROMISE Tool has helped strengthen capacity of local government for integrated, participatory, inclusive and sustainable development and efficient resource mobilisation and utilisation to enhance service delivery, increase community participation and promote diversity in the urban system. Local authorities have been supported to create, enable and institutionalize equitable and inclusive governance mechanism and facilitate the development of smart and sustainable growth in cities through the project. Cities identified the projects that are most desirable and needed by the community. Local governments have recognized the need and importance of citizen engagement.

The SDGs Workshops for Medical Experts and Future Leaders Series was conducted by ICLEI, the Urban Diversity and Mobility Institute (UDM), Dr. Jing-Yin Lin, the Zhongshan Medical University, Chaiyi City Government, the National Federation of Medical Physicians, and the Taiwan Student Union, ICLEI customized and designed workshop materials, and facilitated group discussions for medical students and future leaders to explore sustainable visions, challenges and solutions.

In a rapidly urbanizing world, cities need to become smarter to respond to citizen needs and to reduce their environmental footprint. ICLEI is shaping the Smart City debate in Europe through the Lighthouse demonstration projects (such as GrowSmarter and RUGGEDISED), lead replication and exploitation efforts in more than 50 cities and constructively reflect upon the impact of smart solutions on achieving social cohesion and urban environmental goals.

ICLEI aims to increase the capacity of change makers, civil society and organizations to contribute to more just, sustainable and resilient futures. ICLEI offer academic and professional education on the theory and practice of transformative societal change, by facilitating peer-to-peer learning processes between 15 frontrunner cities and twice as many other cities within Europe.

The aim of the project is to develop an innovative, collaborative and circular systemic approach for regeneration and adaptive reuse of historic city centers. This will be implemented by implementing a repertoire of successful heritage-led regeneration initiatives. The project tests the replicability of the spatial approach and of successful models addressing the specific needs of historic city centres. ROCK delivers new ways to access and experience Cultural Heritage, ensuring environmentally-sound solutions, city branding, bottom-up participation via living labs, while increasing liveability and safety in the involved areas. Sensors and tools support the concrete application of ROCK principles and the platform will enable new ways to collect and exchange data to facilitate networking and synergies.

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.

The Urban Transition Alliance connects industrial legacy cities from Europe, USA and China committed to accelerate ambitious and inclusive transitions, as well as showcasing their sustainability leadership. Alliance cities share their own transition experiences, knowledge and good practices based on social, economic and environmental challenges within their unique industrial legacy context. Through a tailored exchange platform hosted by ICLEI, the Alliance helps cities to identify and leverage expertise to co-create implementation strategies for sustainability-related projects.

During the current project phase, the ICLEI further encourages the Alliance member cities to include an equity-based approach in their transition projects, not only to achieve climate and environmental targets, but also to provide opportunities to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Alliance cities receive support on key equity-focused sustainability issues through two challenge cycles in 2020 and 2021 with 4-5 challenge topics selected per round. The outcomes of these challenge support cycles will shape a blueprint of lessons and good practices for cities worldwide on how social equity and climate action can reinforce each other.

ICLEI stimulates new mobility policies which put people rather than cars at the center, by organizing EcoMobility World Festivals that turn a single neighborhood into an ecomobile, car-free zone for one month, coinciding with a global congress that sparks debate on low emission, human centered and city friendly mobility.

Through the EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK campaign, ICLEI aims to encourage local authorities to test and implement sustainable mobility measures. Within the campaign, ICLEI is responsible for coordinating and carrying out regular dissemination and promotion activities. By taking part in the campaign, towns and cities also use the campaign to promote their sustainable mobility work, in turn gaining more recognition on an international stage, and use it as a platform to introduce more permanent sustainable mobility measures. Local authorities who participate in the campaign and implement all three criteria (organise an activity as part of the week, implement one or more permanent measure, hold a car-free day) are eligible for the EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK Awards.

Temperate is the next-generation, cloud-based adaptation planning software tool for cities and regional organizations, designed to support leaders in local government sustainability planning. With Temperate, ICLEI aims to guide users through exploring potential future climate hazards, creating a vulnerability assessment, and designing adaptation strategies that will help communities along the path toward climate resilience.

ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR co-hosted two workshops for two Chinese cities – Ningbo and Chengdu – to raise awareness of urban resilience with specific focuses on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction among local officials.
The workshops were structured in sessions of concept and tools introduction, and presentations of international and domestic cases on resilience and adaptation. Assessments of local resilience were also conducted via group exercises followed by suggestions on improvements.
ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR will continue to work to support 2 more local governments in China in implementing the Sendai Framework and other urban resilience objectives via workshops. It is expected that local disaster risk reduction planning will be better risk-informed when cities are equipped with skills to assess their respective risks, identify gaps, and ultimately lead to projects to address those gaps. A learning publication will be produced as the final output of the series, to share lessons learned on improving urban resilience in the context of global warming with other cities.

Cities are growing and changing so fast that many authorities are struggling to cope. ICLEI’s aim is to boost sustainable urban development, through city-to-city International Urban Cooperation (IUC) on and foster sub-national actions under the Global Covenant of Mayors initiative. ICLEI supports regional innovation strategies and inter-regional cooperation for local and regional development.

The IADAPT project addresses the water management issues in Indian cities, moving from existing water management practices that plan, establish and operate water supply, wastewater and storm water systems as separate entities to more integrated and collaborative approaches. ICLEI is helping two Indian cities – Solapur and Vijayawada to be climate resilient by developing an integrated catchment management plan guided by the decision support tool developed to move from conventional water management approaches to an ‘Integrated Approach’ based on the principles of IWRM and IUWM. The project will institutionalize climate adaptive water resource management at catchment level guided by participatory catchment planning, simple decision support tools, preparation of catchment level action plans and multi-pronged financing approaches.

In this action research project, ICLEI is providing support to four cities in developing collaboration mechanisms that advance climate resilient developmment, which can then be adapted to other contexts. The implementation of each country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) via enhanced multi-level governance has been identified as an area of focus of this project. Through this project, ICLEI builds on the understanding of what enables collaboration mechanisms for climate resilient development, such as environments that allow for learning-by-doing and accumulation of knowledge that can be harnessed, local government officials who are engaged and passionate about building climate resilience, and cities where strong multi-sectoral partnerships exist. Building climate resilience is a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary issue, and therefore ICLEI promotes collaborative governance, which favours transdisciplinary collaborations that increase the depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise that can be drawn on when tackling complex issues such as climate resilience.

ICLEI worked with Toronto Public Health to carry out research on strategies being used in other jurisdictions to manage extreme heat in older apartment buildings that don’t have air conditioning. The research included both a literature review and interviews with cities in North America and Europe. Eight key strategies were identified for managing extreme heat in Toronto apartment buildings, including active cooling, weatherization and insulation, increasing air circulation, reducing solar gain through windows, increasing natural ventilation, cooling/green/reflective external surfaces, minimizing internal heat generation and cooling on-site within the building.

ICLEI provides workshops that educate municipal governments on how to improve sustainable and resilient mechanisms under the UN frameworks, how to ensure the life quality in order to achieve sustainable development from social, environmental and financial perspectives, and how to enhance and introduce new technology in resilience to start a new business model in the related industry.

ICLEI facilitated and trained two groups of municipalities and stakeholders: Training-the-Trainers and Collaborative Implementation Groups. The former worked with 18 communities across the Great Lakes watershed to better understand their local climate impacts and risks. The project helped municipalities convene local workshops to learn how to use climate change modelling data and identify local vulnerabilities, assess and prioritize their risks, and begin developing adaptation plans. The latter worked with 12 communities to move from planning to action on local resilience by identifying implementation ready adaptation initiatives, securing funding for the initiatives, documenting key lessons learned via a case-study series, and leveraging future activities to support the actual implementation of local initiatives.

The Adaptation Changemakers Project is training and building agents of change for climate adaptation in communicates across Canada. The Changemakers Project is harnessing many stakeholders and decision-makers (municipal, provincial, and federal governments, private sector specialists, industry associations, planners, health professionals) to identify local climate impacts and the actions that each can take to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts locally. Centered around building capacity to engage stakeholders, assess vulnerability and risk, and develop an implementation-ready local adaptation plan, the project will result in adaptation being integrated across both the municipality and wider community. With technical guidance from ICLEI and regional experts, participants are initiating their adaptation effort with local stakeholders, assessing their risks, and developing a local action plan.

Through the Together for Climate project, municipalities are helping to lead a collaborative co-developed planning exercise with key local groups including regional governments, First Nations, chambers of commerce, land developers, academics, and health professionals. ICLEI is building capacity on climate action by convening eight municipalities in a collaborative adaptation planning process. The process identifies, assesses, and plans for local impacts – with a focus on long-term implementation.

American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) program matches communities with earth and space scientists to lay strong, scientifically based foundations for climate action and adaptation planning. ICLEI partnered with TEX for a facilitated workshop with scientists and 12 communities, including ICLEI members Reno and Missoula. In 2017, ICLEI worked with members Antioch, East Lansing, and Savannah as part of the Resilience Dialogues, a public-private collaboration to connect communities with the most appropriate resources. ICLEI acted as a community network lead to help scientists, experts and city staff deliver a set of resiliency questions and connect threats to resource.

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.

ICLEI, through the AfriAlliance project, aims to support existing networks in identifying and sharing social innovations and technological solutions for key water and climate challenges. Capitalising on existing and emerging knowledge and innovation in Africa and the EU, ICLEI supports this process by contributing to the development of a social innovation database for water and climate solutions covering the following aspects: governance, capacity development, business development and technology. ICLEI also contributes to the development of project outputs such as policy briefs, social innovation factsheets, roadshows and innovation bridge events, as well as MOOCs. We also work on communication and visibility of the project, and building relationships between partners and their networks, raising awareness of the water related challenges, and opportunities related to climate change impacts with proposed adaptation measures.

Within this project ICLEI accelerates knowledge transfer and dialogue and raise awareness of innovative public procurement in the field of Education and Technology Enhanced Learning across Europe. Specifically, ICLEI support by setting up a European follower group of cities/public procurers interested in the LEA project and technologies.