Our Activities

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.

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).

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.

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